Truly Existing
by Musicalrain
Summary: I find myself suddenly sucked into a video game, and what do I do? Completely loose it. Rated a hard T for violence and language. A self-insert into DA:O events. Updates twice a week. Genera subject to change.
1. Chapter 1

**Truly Existing**

_A/N: I've been playing around with stories with this same basis (un-published) for both the fandoms I write for, and I think I've narrowed down what I want to do enough to write this! It's a self-insert into DA:O events, but not with my real name (have to follow some of the site's rules). _

* * *

I wake up screaming and crying – the crying has happened a few times before, but not the screaming. I'm deafening myself with just how ear-piercing those screams are, but that's not what has my attention, rather it is the pain. Pain unlike anything I've felt before, and I've dislocated my jaw a few times, is positively surging through by body enough to blind and numb me to my entire surroundings. I can't pinpoint the source of this burning, frazzling sensation, nor can I make sense of it all. I was just asleep in my bed, but now... now there's only _this_, this pain, and I cannot even think coherently through the blanketing, suffocating sensation._ Why_ is becoming a prevalent thought though – why is this happening, why is it _still_ happening? It is dark when I open my eyes, but there's a subtle shimmer to it. Something I can't quite explain, and something I'm unsure if it's really there. Am I hallucinating all of this? Am I stuck in a nightmare again? Have I slept walked and hurt myself by accident? The sleep walking and the chronic nightmares haven't happened since I was small, but what else am I supposed to think? The pain, it's still there – it's letting up, or I'm burning out, but it's still there.

I don't know how long that finite point of barely thinking, barely comprehending, yet surging with terrible sensation lasts for, but eventually there's nothing my body's focused on other than that darkness with the shimmer. What is it? Why is it there? The shimmer, it seems to be... adhering itself to my very flesh, making it shimmer in turn. It's red, the shimmer, redness in black... like webs. Tendrils of inky red snake up and bind to my skin, tattooing it in a barely discernible shine in this darkness. A glimmer here and there is all I see of this redness time and time again, but it's growing, spreading, covering all I can see of the parts of my body not covered by my pajama pants and t-shirt, and further beyond. I'm covered, I know I am, I can see that much and I wonder if this was my saving grace from that horrible, horrible pain. Did this redness take it away? Or perhaps it's what caused it in the first place, and I can longer feel it as it embeds into my body.

It stops – it stops being just in the line of my sight, and is now completely on me, and with that the darkness fades. The redness on my body brings about the light – sound, touch, smell, it all returns to me jarringly. Suddenly, so suddenly it's a shock to the system, I can_ see_ and have all my faculties returned to me in what seems an impossibly fast and consuming moment in time. I'm laying on something hard, cold, and sticky. The smell reminds me of the formaldehyde and slight decay from my old biology labs, and the rankness of stale, foetid water after a flood. My fingers and limbs are stretched straight in a position I'm unaccustomed to be in while I'm supposed to be resting, and my head is positively swimming. And what I see doesn't make _any_ damned sense.

There's three people hovering over me, looking down on me with steely faces that are completely unrecognizable. I have not a fucking clue who these guys are. And they look strange – they have that unstable, off their rocker, look about them. A slight facial tic here and there, too glossy and large of eyes, skin stretched too thin over foreheads, and noses and chins too large for faces. One man is completely bald with his wide, thin lips pulled into a harsh line. Another man's face is covered in something – dark mud or paint drawn in something that looks vaguely like many elaborate Celtic symbols. The last man has a tangle of knots for a beard and hair, and eyes that I swear flash red for a fleeting moment. My mind stutters to a halt, and I haven't the faintest idea how to make sense out of everything I'm seeing – everything that my body is processing.

"It is done," the man with knots for hair breathes in a solemn, raspy, heavily accented voice. He lifts a... shit is that a hole in his hand? The blood, it looks like it's glowing, but that doesn't make any damned sense. There's so much of it though. How can he possibly be bleeding that much and is still standing? And then that hand is pressed against my forehead quicker than I can blink and the world becomes no more than a muted, boundless, painless black.

I wake up though, and wish that I hadn't. The pain is never quite like it was when I had first awoken from sleep, but it is draining and exhausting all the same. Each man, I haven't the faintest idea who they are, mutter the same thing, 'Protect us from Urthemiel,' before touching an impossibly glowing bloody hand to one of my extremities – and then the pain starts anew. It's not like the first time, when the knotty haired man touched me and oblivion overwhelmed me, but it's more like that time when the red shimmering webs adhered themselves to me. The webs are already there though, just faintly visible beneath my skin, and they_ ache_ and _burn_ every time one of those men touch me with their disgusting hands. I don't know how long I've been like this, and I don't know how much more of this agony, this torture, I can handle. Why am I not home? Why am I here? What the hell happened to me?

Time... I'm loosing time, all sense of it, and all logical thought. I don't know how many times they mutter those four words to me in their accented, strained voices, but I remember – I remember what, or rather _who_ Urthemiel is, and it doesn't, isn't, possible. Urthemiel is from a fucking _video game_. Have I gone insane? Insanity seems the most reasonable explanation for everything I've experienced so far, and everything I don't have an explanation for.

Convinced that I am that I'm insane, and can't do a single thing about it but idly allow myself to be subject to what surely has to be a psychotic episode, I can't even remotely comprehend the sight and sound of those three men dying in a blaze of flaming medieval-like weapons and arrows. I hear words that aren't those four, words like 'blood mages', 'damnation', and 'prisoner'. My brain sputters at the new information, and my eyes waver from the sight of so much blood and gore. Body parts that I've only seen replicas or pictures of are suddenly splayed before me from those three men's cavities... and their blood, but it no longer glows red.

That impossible, impossible sight is blocked when a stranger's face replaces it – a clean-shaven, olive-tanned man with dark ruddy, sweat stained hair poking out from beneath a leather cap, the strap beneath his chin, and ruby red blood finely splattered across his brow above his honeyed hazel eyes. I'm fixated on the details of his face, as if I've never seen someone with concern in their eyes or kindness in their features before. He's not those men. He's different. Why?

"You're safe," I watch his lips say. "We're Grey Wardens, and we can help you."

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_Another A/N: These chapters will be fairly short, so as not to put too much pressure on myself for chapter length. I'm writing this for fun, and not too seriously. ;) But quality still matters to me, so if you notice any glaring mistakes please let me know! :) If you were reading my OMH:R DAII story, I'm sorry but I have severe writer's block on it. :/ This here story though, that I'll be referring to as TE, is mostly written! I'm about 4/5 of the way done with it, and already have a sequel planned. I'll be updating TE twice a week, on random days that my schedule allows for me to edit what I have written. lol. Thanks for reading! And feel free to drop a review or a PM! :D Anyone who reads this is totally awesome!  
_


	2. Chapter 2

_"You're safe," I watch his lips say. "We're Grey Wardens, and we can help you."_

* * *

I laughed, or maybe I cried, or maybe I did both. Muscles that haven't moved but in tight spasms in my forced prone form ache when my whole body shakes in my hysteria. "You're not real," I hear myself croak out in a voice dry, and nearly unrecognizable as my own. I haven't spoken a single word that wasn't an agonizing scream since I've been home. Since before I went to sleep in the comfort of my bed. How ever long ago that was. "None of this is real."

"The poor thing," I hear a feminine voice that is accented differently than all the others say. "She has blinded herself to reality to escape the horrors she faced here."

"No. It's a game," I look over towards the speaker, and recognize the woman standing in worn medieval leathers as a life-like apparition of one of the video game's characters. "I know who you are," I rasp. "You're Le-Leliana," her name comes out in a stutter. My tongue feels heavy and difficult to move.

I look around towards the others, hardly unbelieving that my insanity has conjured up more things from that game, and say their names when my foggy mind recognizes them for who they are. "You're Alistair," he removes his helmet and I'm even more certain of myself. "You're Morrigan. Flemeth's your ma," I cough on the dry, acrid air. "And that guy's Sten."

"Do you know who I am?" The first man asks me, but, no, I don't recognize him individually.

"You're the Warden," I laugh a dry, dry laugh that's probably more like a wheeze. "You're all in my head," I continue. "I know all your stories. Your life's stories. It's all in my head."

I watch while Leliana says something in French, but it's the wide lips of Morrigan that speak and capture my attention. "If I am not mistaken, it seems these imbecile blood mages captured themselves a seer for some unknown and probably foolish purpose."

I laugh, and it turns into sobbing. Why can't I wake up? I want to be back home. I don't want to play this game.

"I don't want to play this game," I hear myself say aloud. How much have I said aloud? "I don't want to protect them from Urthemiel. They're dead. I saw them die. They're dead. Urthemiel dies. I saw him die. The dragon dies. He always dies."

"Wait," the first man says and puts a hand on my shoulder and I look up at him with unblinking, blurry eyes. "Did you say you saw the Archdemon die?"

"Yes," I reply simply. "He always dies at the end of the game."

"Do you know how?" He asks with an urgency about him.

"Yeah," I wheeze. "With a sword in his head."

"Whose sword?"

"Yours," I lean forward. "If you were a woman, it might've been Alistair. But you're a man – you kill the dragon with a sword. In the head. And you might die. Sometimes the Warden dies in the game. It depends on the choices you make." I cough again. "Only after all the treaties though. You need an army. There's lots of darkspawn." I cough harder, "But I don't want to play this game. It's already in my head. I already know what happens. I don't want to watch it again."

"Blighted bullocks!" He curses and looks over his shoulder at his companions. "Is this even possible?"

"I've read a little on seers," I hear Alistair reply. "They know pieces of the future. They see it."

Morrigan speaks next. "Most can do little else of substance. They are little more than hedge witches."

"You all don't make sense," I mutter. I'm not a seer. I'm not a witch. "I'm a person. And I only know the future until right after the Chantry blows up cause Anders is stupid."

The Warden is silent in front of me with his blood-stained brow furrowed, and it bothers me so I lean forward and poke it. Totally random, but the sight of his brow had garnered all of my attention and wouldn't let it be. I'm far from being stable at the moment. "Which Warden are you?" I ask with my finger still against his forehead, "The Hero is always different. It depends. Lots of things can happen, but the Archdemon always dies after the treaties and everything. You always need an army."

"What do you mean 'lots of things can happen'?"

"Your decisions create the story," I explain. "Some things can't be changed, but there's always different things. Like a... like a web." I frown and repeat my original question. "Which Warden are you?"

"My name is Sloane Tabris," he says, "And do you-"

"Sloane Tabris," I repeat and interrupt him while I put my hand atop his head with a sudden and consuming eureka feeling. "You're an elf!" I exclaim, "From Denerim, and your cousins are Shianni and Soris! I remember them!"

He blinks at me and removes my hand, "You know my cousins?"

I nod, "But I've never met them like you. What is with your family and S's? My family has a lot of K's, but your family has a lot of S's."

"What is your name dear?" Leliana asks me, and she's much closer than she was before.

"Karie," I answer and twist my fingers together. My head is whirling. I don't think I'm making much sense, and I'm talking like an idiot. I'm certain I sound as smart as a pile of rocks. But I'm insane. It doesn't matter. This is all in my head.

"I think she should join us," Sloane announces. "We just took on Bodahn and Sandal, why not one more?"

"And you just killed those guys," I interject. "They hurt me. I don't know what they did, but it hurt a lot. And their blood was glowing."

"According to the experts, they were blood mages." His brow furrows again, "Would you join us in raising that army you keep talking about? We could use the help from someone who says they've already seen it happen."

"Only if you stop crinkling your face," I say and poke his brow again. "Stop that – it bothers me."

He grasps my wrist and moves it from his face, "You have yourself a deal."

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_A/N: Thank you to everyone that's read this and followed it in just one day of it being out! You're all the best! :D And so here's another chapter for Easter, if you celebrate it. Some chapters, for transitional reasons, I'll put the last sentence from the prior chapter at the top. And that was never my idea originally - I've seen a couple other authors do that, and thought it was a good idea. ;) Thanks again readers!_


	3. Chapter 3

I'm starting to entertain the idea that I might not be insane and that this could actually be real. The clarity in which I'm seeing things is staying, and it always fades in my dreams. Things look so... so life-like. It's hard to believe they're not. The sky, the trees, even the dirt beneath my bare feet. And all that blood I saw in that cabin I was in. There was frightfully red blood everywhere – from those men's bodies, that alter-thing I was laying on, and the blood smeared on the Wardens and companions' weapons and armor. It's all so real-looking, and not clouded over by a haze of pain and fear. When I touch it, it doesn't change; it stays. And it's amazing. If... if I'm not insane, then how the hell did I get here? What the fuck happened to me?

I follow the others back to camp like a lost puppy, but I choose to stay close to Sloane cause he keeps asking me questions. I don't want to answer all of them though. Things are fuzzy, my mind is muddled, and I can't think straight in the first place, but some things I can't spoil for him if this really is reality. I know that, and I try to hold my tongue. Some desperate part of me wants to believe I'm not insane, but I'm not entirely convinced this isn't some elaborate projection of my imagination. Don't schizophrenics truly believe in their own illusions? Couldn't something similar have happened to me? Can't psychosis come about abruptly and seemingly without cause?

I'm roused out of my thoughts when I see a big dog, it looks like a mastiff, running towards us when we enter a clearing with a cart and some tents. Sloane swoops down and pats the dog on the head as he mutters to it, "You watched after our friends, didn't you boy?" He points a thumb at me, "We brought you another person to protect. Do you think you can handle it?"

The dog happily barks, and I look at it with a bit of confusion. "Is he your mabari?" I ask, and the dog barks happily again. The dog looks so real... it's so strange.

"Come," Sloane waves me over. "I'll introduce you to Bodahn and Sandal."

I'm introduced to Bodahn, but Sandal has my attention quickly when I notice his expression – he's looking at me intently. "Shiny," he whispers breezily up at me.

"What's shiny?" I ask him with wide eyes filled with confusion and shock at seeing more characters from the game that are life-like.

"Shiny," he whispers again and reaches out slowly to gently touch one of the faint, shimmering red lines that are webbed just beneath the skin on my forearm.

That soft pressure is enough to disturb those lines and awaken them – the lines all over my body shimmer brightly with an ethereal glow the very same instant pain surges throughout my body enough to make me double over. I yell out in confusion and hurt, and hear gasps and groans from those nearest to me. Next thing I know I'm breathing heavily through my nose, desperate to staunch the burning sensation once I regain some capability to think again, and watch as those lines in my skin flicker and fade to their prior faint state. This whole episode lasts just a few seconds, but it feels like forever.

"What... was that?" Sloane huffs.

"Somethin' those blood mages did," I reply. I'm hunched over on the ground staring at my bared arms with tears welling in my eyes. "It hurts every time they do that."

"I felt it too, a pulling and burning sensation throughout my body." I look up at those words to see Sloane clutching his middle with one arm and a grimace on his face. I'm shocked that whatever this red crap in me is hurt him too, and see him turn his head towards the two dwarves beside us after a moment. "Bodahn, Sandal – are you well?"

"A little shaken up, Warden, but we seem to be fine. Dwarves have a natural magic resistance about them."

"Magic?" I hiccup. What the fuck is going on? "This is blood magic – please tell me this isn't real. Please, I want to go home," I bury my face into my palms while my emotions surge. "This isn't real. Please. This can't be real."

"Well, well, well," I hear Morrigan drawl and look through the hot, fat tears stuck to my eyelashes to see her walking towards us with determined steps. "That was quite the spectacle. An aura of pain, if I'm not mistaken. A small one at that."

"What is this aura of pain?" Sloane asks bemusedly while he slowly moves to stand.

"You had felt it, did you not? I would imagine you know it quite well," she rolls her eyes. "But I gather that you wish to know this aura's cause? Tis a skill common amongst blood mage and Reaver alike."

"Those men did this to me," I rasp. "It... it was dark, and they... I'm not sure what happened, but these red... webs have been in my skin ever since, and they hurt when they touched them."

"Blood magic," I hear Alistair sneer as he and Leliana come to investigate what had happened too. "Some sort of forbidden ritual, maybe. I've never heard of such a thing though."

Morrigan rolls her eyes again. "I'd imagine the Chantry only instilled a fear of magic in their Templars, and did not bother themselves with teaching the intricacies of the Fade, even demonic in nature."

"Are you saying you're a blood mage?" His eyes flash in sudden anger.

"I am not," Morrigan spits, "I was _educated _on all aspects of the Fade and its inhabitants. Tis better to know one's enemy than be ignorant of it. Though I doubt those Chantry fools allow the mages they've culled to have an understanding of all they face daily being who they are. Twould be foolish to face a demon without knowing it for what it is."

"Enough," Sloane interjects with a cutting swipe of his hand in the air, "Morrigan," he says her name as if it was very difficult for him to do, "do you know what those blood mages did to our seer here?"

She squints her unnaturally yellow eyes at me critically before snapping her arm forward and hovering a white-ish glowing hand above me. "Those red 'webs' are blood, and they house a dark energy. I would surmise that this blood is not her own, as it seems it was forced within?" She asks with a raised brow, and I nod even through my uncertainty and confusion. "An altered Reaver ritual perhaps?" She questions aloud and than shakes her head. "It has great power regardless of what ritual brought this about. But this is all pointless – the girl obviously has no control over it."

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_A/N: Yes, I've given my story-self reaver abilities. Figured it'd make things interesting. Btw - my un-published version of TE is already almost 50k words. :D I'm thinking about increasing the frequency of updates to more than twice in a week. Idk though. And I give internet cookies to everyone that's read, reviewed, followed, and favorited this story so far! You're all amazing!  
_


	4. Chapter 4

That alter was sticky with blood, and there's blood coated all over me, but mostly on my back as it seems I was laying in it. Whose blood though, I don't know and I don't want to know. I can only imagine what a nightmare like this would have as it's source. I'd never seen so much blood on me before. It's pungent and disgusting, just like these lines beneath my skin. I feel sick to my stomach at it all. I have no idea what's going on. What happened. Even with explanations, I'm lost. Then again, how can anything possibly make sense when I'm in this state?

Leliana led me over to her tent after I finally got my feet beneath myself again. I couldn't listen to anything Morrigan had to say anymore, and she's got some choice things to say about it too. She knows more about blood magic and this kind of shit than Alistair, and she loves to rub it in. But she was also looking at me funny while jabbing at the Templar. I felt like I was under a microscope with the way she was looking at me with an unnatural gleam in her preternatural gaze.

I'm brought out of my thoughts jarringly when Leliana clucks her tongue while she rifles through her meager things, "I am not sure if I have anything that would fit you well. Perhaps we should ask Sloane?" She looks up at me from her crouched place on the ground holding her bag, "All I have are worn Chantry robes. Not the best choice to be wearing while avoiding a horde of darkspawn." She looks back at her bag briefly, "Perhaps I should have packed more. Hmm."

"I'm – I'm okay," I say in turn. "I just need some sleep." And then maybe I'll wake up from this hallucination and find myself back in my bed? Maybe I haven't completely lost my marbles? "I haven't slept since... since before what ever happened to me," I continue with a longing plain in my voice for some God-honest rest and the clarity I desire to gain from it. "I always blacked out from the pain, or they knocked me out with a touch. I feel... I'm exhausted," I confess.

"Oh mon," she shakes her head. "You must change and clean up some though. How ever will you rest properly covered in filth?"

I frown when she takes my mood silence for assent, and she bodily drags me from her tent. I'll go along with everything, this insanity, for now. What else can I do? Curl up in a ball and bawl my eyes out? I've already done that, and it got me no where fast.

Sloane gives me a set of his clothes, and apparently they're still unworn since he had just bought them from Bodahn hours ago. They're all a little low on supplies, he explains, because they've just narrowly escaped Ostagar with nothing more than their weapons and armor. Even Sten is still unarmored with nothing more than a spare short sword for his use. Sten in-person creeps me out, to be honest. I don't like the way he regards everything and he's just too quiet. Unnaturally quiet. He looks more qunari-like in person though, and he's a good two feet taller than me. I'm a bit afraid of him. He looks like he could kill me quite easily, even without that sword. His face is so stony too. I'm not even sure just how hostile he is either, or just how much I should really be afraid of him.

Leliana lets me use her tent to change, and says that it's probably best if we burn my old clothes. They're not salvageable, it seems. And I feel almost naked afterwards, even in the strange, slightly itchy, medieval men's tunic and trousers I'm wearing. We had to burn _all _my clothes. I don't think I need to explain that. So much blood. We even had to burn the cloth I used to clean up. While I was changing and cleaning myself I noticed something strange though. All my scars are gone, and my body has wasted away to where I'm little more than skin and bones. I'm emaciated, dehydrated, and yet I'm oddly not hungry or thirsty. And just why are my scars gone? Even the little one on my pinky finger from when it got cut from a broken glass. Does blood magic heal? I think I remember something like that... Reavers can do that too, maybe. Just what did those men do to me? Why would my mind create something so... so strange and make it all seem so real? For what purpose would it have me be tortured and healed by strangers that I've never seen before in my life...?

Later, after I'm changed because Leliana pushed me to, I'm quiet while we're sitting by the fire, my food untouched, and I'm just watching the flames dance and crackle. I'm trying to make sense of everything. It's not working very well. For instance, the food, even if I were hungry, I would not eat. I'm vegan by choice, and even in my dreams I don't eat animals, dairy, or eggs. The dried meat, cheese, and bread are unappetizing at best. The earthen mug of water is sitting by my feet, and every once in awhile I look at it knowing that I ought to at least drink, but unwilling to. Why would my hallucinations present me with something like this to eat?

"Mon ami?" I turn to see Leliana leaning towards me with a concerned look about her. She probably thinks of me as some kind of charity case. She was a Chantry sister, wasn't she? Wait. I'm being pitied by an imaginary person. That's ridiculous. "Your food is untouched! Are you not famished? You look bereft."

I scowl. "I don't like to eat animals, or animal products." I look away stubbornly and not willing to have a conversation, "I'm not hungry anyway."

"You do not eat meat and cheese?" She asks from beside me. "How unusual," she muses. "You can at least eat the bread, can you not? I will ask our Warden friends for another heel for you." She doesn't give me a chance to tell her no before she stands and wanders over towards Sloane and Alistair, where they're talking in hushed voices. She comes back a short while later with a hopeful smile on her face and a large chunk of bread in-hand, and I eat it so I don't look like I'm ungrateful. The water too. My stomach grumbles after I eat, and I feel queasy. I'm not doing too good, either mentally or physically it seems. And why do I care if I eat or look ungrateful or not? This isn't real. I shouldn't care. I have to remind myself of that.

Sten and Alistair have first watch and so, since Sten makes me uncomfortable, I take the blanket Sloane had given me when he had lent me his clothes earlier, and curl up in a ball beside a tree's trunk and near Leliana's tent. None of the others begrudge me over my sleeping choices, and I'm thankful for that. I need the silence. I need to get a way form those people - people who look so real, but can't possibly be... I need space. I need time to think. It probably takes me a few hours, but I eventually fall into a restless sleep. This time the darkness that overcomes me as I drift off is comfortable and safe, and so unlike anything I've felt in who-knows-how-long.

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_A/N: More internet cookies (vegan - haha) to you people that are enjoying this story! __The chapter's still short, but the quality's better sine I took a little more time than I have before to look over things. It looks like twice weekly updates are staying folks. ;)_


	5. Chapter 5

_This time the darkness that overcomes me as I drift off is comfortable and safe, and so unlike anything I've felt in who-knows-how-long._

* * *

I wake up and I'm still _here_. Still in this ridiculous hallucination of a too-real video game. I blink and look at my surroundings, but they're the same as the night before. _Why_? I feel tears welling in my eyes at the realization, and before I know it I'm crying silently, helplessly, while I wrap the thread-bare blanket around my shoulders tighter. I lean against the tree I slept beside with a posture belaying the defeat and despair I feel. Why am I still here? Why won't my mind give up on this already? Why am I not home? I thought that maybe this could be real, but I don't want it to be. I can't think of any other reason for this though, other than I've gone insane. I don't want that to be true either. I swipe at my face and bow my head while curling tighter in on myself. I just want to be home. I just want things to go back to normal. My eyes burn and ache with all the crying I've been doing lately, and so stuck in my thoughts that I am, I don't notice that there's someone standing before me until they say my name.

"Karie?" I look up and see the Warden, Sloane, already dressed in some rather worn and ill-fitting leathers with his two long daggers strapped to his back. Why is he the Warden in this world my mind conjured up? He was never my Warden before, and I've never even created him otherwise. I've never seen him before. "Alistair and I have sensed darkspawn entering the area, and we're going to attempt to leave before they're on us."

My eyes widen with that knowledge, and I nod mutely as all my other thoughts fade to the back of my mind with what he's said. I move to stand weakly and on unsteady feet. "What would happen if the darkspawn do attack us?" I ask softly with a nervous wringing of my hands. I'm not above the idea that this illusion can harm me - the vestiges of pain still linger from my experiences so far, and I'd rather not be hurt again. I know the mind is a powerful thing, and reality or not, I can be hurt.

"Ideally?" He brings a hand to his chin in consideration before he continues, "You, Bodahn and Sandal would be in the cart while we kill them before they can do any real damage... There's a good chance any of you could be injured though," he finishes quietly with concern briefly flashing in his hazel eyes. "Morrigan's mother and Bodahn seem to be of the idea that it's safest to travel with Wardens during a Blight. And perhaps that's true - we'll try our hardest to keep you all out of harm's way, and I believe we have the means to."

"Thanks," I say with a note of uncertainty. "Where are we going then?"

"We're off to find the Dalish first," he gestures with his hands as he speaks, and motions for me to follow him while he walks towards Bodahn's cart. "I'd overheard a few of the villagers speaking of a tribe not too far from here. Apparently the Chasind would trade with them."

"You do find the Dalish in the Brecillian," I tell him while I'm huddled up in my blanket, cold due to the fresh dew on the sparse vegetation I'm walking on barefoot and needing a warmth about me regardless – I still feel so drained despite the sleep I got. "The Keeper will need some help before he'll honor the treaty though. There's an... infection spreading around his people."

"Is it contagious?" Sloane asks with a raised brow and a troubled look.

"Only..." I hesitate. How much do I say? I have to be careful, since I'm stuck in this reality... this figment of reality. I don't know what to do. Do I play along with this, or not? Do I tell him everything, or not? I make up my mind and answer purposefully vague due to my uncertainties about... well, everything. "Only through direct contact."

"We'll have to be careful then," he frowns. "I'm not sure how much help we can be with an infection though."

"You'll offer to help him find an ingredient he needs to make a cure. It's hard to get, and too dangerous for his hunters," I say while watching the dew stick to my feet as I walk. I'm trying to distract myself, but he keeps talking. "Everything works out in the end," I sigh and hope that's the end of this conversation. I just want to be left alone, honest.

"Yes, you seem quite certain of that," he turns to me with a seriousness etched into his face that forces me to look up to him and keep his gaze and listen to him. "You keep saying things to that effect."

I nod and answer the unspoken question. "You end the Blight in about a year – the fastest it's ever done."

He breathes in harshly through his nose and pauses a moment before he concedes, "With your help no doubt."

I take a moment to think about that. In the game you control the Warden – essentially helping them in making the decisions needed to end the Blight in the game's story. And without someone to help the Warden, the game wouldn't ever be played. Then the Blight wouldn't end, it would always just _be_. In this world my mind has created, this reality though it's not _real_, it's not the reality I know to be true, I'm helping the Warden. I'm not controlling him, just guiding him in a way that's probably at least comparable to playing the character within the restrictions the game developers created. My psychosis has inserted me into the game.

"Yeah, with my help," I say quietly, and then a thought occurs to me. "You'd said that you'd help me," I meet his gaze steadily. "I'll help you too – I can make sure you won't get hurt or die. If you'll listen to what I tell you."

"And what is that?"

"I'll have things to say whenever shit hits the fan. It'll happen a lot." I smile weakly, if it could even be called that. Who knows how long I'll be stuck here. Might as well try and keep things from going bad. I don't want to be hurt any more, and if it means playing along with this insanity, then I'll do it. I don't know what else to do, or what I can do. I look up at him and study the face of the future Hero of Ferelden – at least in this portrayal of the game. He looks far from a hardened warrior, but he will be by the end of this, that's for sure. "You can do this, you know. I've seen it happen," I reassure tentatively. He still has that troubled look about him.

"Encouraging words from a seer, I suppose there's no second guessing that," he too smiles weakly, though his is more nervous than anything else.

"Your mother was a Night Elf, wasn't she? Adaia? She even helped the Wardens too, if I remember right, and she taught you how to fight." I continue to try and be encouraging, "You learned from one of the best – you'll make her proud."

He blinks at me owlishly with shock on his features, "I don't think I'll ever get used to you doing that," he mutters.

"Doing what?" I ask while brushing the dried tear tracks from earlier off of my cheeks.

"Just... knowing so much." He shakes his head, "Do you know of the past too?"

I shrug, "I just know about this time, is all. And not a whole lot of it either. I have no idea what's going on in the other countries right now."

"Hmm," he hums in thought and then looks around. "I think we're all settled. We should get a start before the darkspawn get any closer to finding us."

I look to the cart and ask, "Can I sit in there? I don't have any shoes."

Sloane and Bodahn allow me to sit in the cart without much of a fuss. We move quickly afterwards and start heading to the east and trying to out maneuver the 'spawn. I look out at the wilderness and the dirt trail we're traveling on. It's nothing like home. It's not home.

"You seem well today," Leliana comments to me from where I'm sitting on a crate in Bodahn's cart and she's walking beside at a leisurely pace despite our urgency in leaving the area. The ox pulls this thing slow.

Her simple comment gets my attention despite my sombre mood. "What do you mean?" I ask in return.

"You have been speaking in full sentences, and more clearly, if I may say so. I also may have spied a small smile on your face when you were speaking with Warden Sloane earlier too," one corner of her lips raises in a smirk, or maybe a slight smile. Yeah, she's a bard too. Can't forget she's a medieval James Bond. She probably eavesdrops on everything. It's likely a survival tactic she uses, even here. And I _know _she uses it too.

"Oh," I purse my lips unsure of what else to say. My mind's still stuck on the thought that bard's are the Thedas version of special intelligence agents. She could kill me quite easily too, couldn't she? Actually all of these people I'm around are all very, very deadly. That's an uncomfortable thought too. Could this dream kill me? Can I die here? I think I'd heard something once that if you die in your dreams you die in real life. I know that's complete bullshit, but the idea still bothers me. I'm going to die in my own psychotic imaginings, aren't I?

"I have a few questions, if I may?" Leliana tilts her head and drags me back from my distractions.

"I'm not very interesting," I mumble. "You don't have to try and talk to me."

"Why would you say that?!" She gasps. "You are the first seer I have ever met - I would say that would make you quite interesting and good for conversation, non?"

I frown. "I'm not a 'seer'," I use their word they keep calling me. I've heard it before though in the second game. I remember what it is here. Someone with foresight - like Alistair and Morrigan were explaining before.

"What are you then, if not a seer?" She pushes for information, and I refuse to cave to her kind voice and questions.

Maybe I should change the topic... "Can we talk about something else? I don't want to talk about myself."

She doesn't say anything for a long moment, and I don't know why, so I look at her out of the corner of my eye. She's looking at me like a puzzle to be solved. "You are still blinding yourself, are you not?," she mutters. "You have already said much about yourself, mon ami."

* * *

_A/N: I lied - here's an extra chapter this week for all you readers and reviewers! I couldn't help myself. :P  
_


	6. Chapter 6

I'm laying in the cart staring up at the sky – and I have been for the last few hours. I have nothing else to do... other than think. I've been thinking too much lately. More more than is common, for sure. I'm usually not so introspective. People with chronic foot-in-mouth disease aren't very introspective. Regardless, I'm so very confused. And, if I'm honest, scared shitless.

We're following that road that leads from Lothering to the Brecilian forest, and nothing else of note has happened. If anything of note did happen, I'm not sure what I'd do. We're avoiding the darkspawn thanks to the Wardens' senses and Morrigan's shape-shifting to fly as an animal and scout ahead. I stopped talking to Leliana, but once I did that all I had was my thoughts. I can't even think clearly anymore. It might be the starvation, but still. Nothing makes any damned sense.

"This sucks," I mumble aloud. "Everything's just a big pile of shit."

I hear a clanking and a soft 'oomph' at the same time the cart shakes due to an impact near my feet. I lean up on my elbows to see Alistair waver on his feet with a hand on the cart as he tries to right himself.

"Are you okay?" I ask with a furrowed brow and a little confusion. He's clumsier than I'd thought he'd be – can't even walk straight. Was there a pothole or something?

"Sorry! Sorry," he squeaks and flushes in embarrassment. "I'd just, uh, never heard a lady say such a thing before."

'Big pile of shit' made him trip up? What? That's just silly. Now my brows raise in question, "Uh... That wasn't even that bad."

"Maker, yes, I've heard worse," he shakes his head. "Dockhands have the filthiest mouths... But that's not what I meant. I've just, uh, you're a lady and I, um, didn't expect that. From you."

"Uh huh," I mutter sarcastically. "I can swear worse, you know." I purse my lips, "And I'm not a lady. Not even close." I'm pretty sure noble ladies here are way more crazier than I am anyways. I mean, I'm obviously crazy, but just about every noble lady here is a sadistic bitch with a God-complex.

"If you're not a lady, then what are you?" He smirks, "You don't look very manly." He's... teasing me?

I sit up. "Not what I meant," I resist the urge to roll my eyes, unlike Morrigan when talking to Alistair. "I'm – I'm a commoner," is that the right word? "A peasant. Not a lady."

"I'm a peasant too," he says with a smirk still about him. Not really – peasant raised, but not really. "Does that not make me a man?"

"You're not a lord," I can't help it and roll my eyes now. "I'm a woman, not a lady." I scrunch my nose and accuse, "You're teasing me on purpose."

He chuckles, "You've seen right through me my lady."

"Ugh. One of my sisters does the same thing to me," I swipe a hand down my face in exasperation.

"Sisters?" He asks quietly and I look at him suddenly with his abrupt change in tone – from playful to... rather sad sounding. Maybe concerned. "You have family?"

I fold my legs towards my chest, "Yeah... I d-don't," I stutter, "know where they are... The last thing I remember is sleeping in my bed at home. I'm not sure what happened," that's putting it mildly. They're still sane, and I'm not. I'm lost in my mind.

"You don't think the blood mages-" he cuts himself off mid-sentence before taking a breath and starting again. "I'm sorry. That was insensitive of me."

"It's okay," I say quietly. My scatterbrained thoughts are threatening to overwhelm me again.

There's an uneasy quiet between us until Alistair coughs lightly and I look to him again. "Um, I don't know how to ask this, but... you're a seer – you didn't see...?"

"I only know some things," and I'm not really a seer, "but I don't know anything about my own future, or my family's."

"That's... rather unfortunate," he frowns. "I don't know my family, so I suppose I can't relate, but perhaps once the Blight is said and done... maybe you can try to find them?"

"Maybe," I agree. I just hope by that point I'll be sane and back home anyways, and I won't have to figure out how to get myself out of this illusion my psychosis created. How long can this possibly last for anyways?

We're starting to enter the Brecillian forest now, and I look up at the canopy of trees when the cart beings to bounce slightly on the uneven terrain. Everything's so real. It's so... unexplainable. The trees... the way the lights play on the shadows that the leaves create, or the sudden coolness of indirect light, and the way the soft breeze ruffles my knotted, matted hair. It's so believable, but I know better than to be tricked by it. This is all a game.

"Something isn't right," Alistair announces from beside me, and the hard edge to his voice breaks me out of the daze I had suddenly lapsed into. "Darkspawn!" he shouts, and I freeze – everyone's unsheathing their weaponry, and the cart stops with a thump when the ox pulls short. Will I die, and will death restore my reality?

Bodahn and Sandal scurry off of the driver's bench and into the back of the cart that I've been sitting and laying in, and huddle near me despite the weird shit that blood magic did to me, and the danger that I am. They're absolutely terrified, if their pale faces and round, large eyes are any indication.

It's not darkspawn though... it's Blight wolves. Those wolves look so, so mutated. Bizarre and gross at the same time. Their fur is slimy and dark with bones and flesh a crude, hanging mass around their frames. A whole pack of them... They're not digital, and they're much faster than what they seemed like on the TV. I watch in horrified fascination as one of the wolves leaps and pushes Sloane hard onto the trail. The wolf's jaws and unnaturally long teeth snap at the Warden's face, but is stopped from grabbing hold due to one of Sloane's daggers pushed up against the base of it's neck that's working slowly, and what looks like with a lot of effort, through the tendons and muscle.

I swing my gaze around wildly – nearly deafened due to the shouts, growls, and other sounds of battle, and see Leliana shooting with her long bow incredibly fast into the wolves before they can gain on the position she seems to have made with Morrigan near the front of the cart by the ox. Alistair is working his way towards Sloane, with one wolf's jaws clamped tight around his calf. The wolf is shaking its head as it tries to work past his armor, and Alistair tries to get it off with his shield. Sten is shouting unintelligibly using his fists and his too small sword against three of the wolves at once. He's not wearing armor and he's already bloody. Very bloody. Shit. I look back to the Warden worriedly, and see that Randall, Sloane's mabari, has made his way to his master with another wolf snapping at his hind legs. I feel tears spring to my eyes when I watch the mutant wolf latch onto Randall's side with a loud snarl, and tackle him away from Sloane's prone form. Sloane has another wolf clawing away at his middle now too.

"Bad doggy!" Sandal shouts from beside me. I turn my head and feel an instantaneous coldness crawl up my spine at what I see. There's a fucked up mean looking wolf half-way into the cart. Its saliva is black, as black as its deadened eyes, and it just... it just looks way worse than any Blight wolf I ever saw in the game. I'm scared, so scared I'm barely drawing in enough breath, when it scrapes all the way onto the cart with a threatening snarl of success. Without fully acknowledging what I'm doing, I move in front of Sandal the moment the wolf leaps at the boy.

Pain... that's all I feel. Red tendrils that look oh so much like the faintly shimmering marks embedded into my flesh seep into my vision at the same time I'm focused so intently it _hurts _on the wolf with its disgusting teeth digging into my forearm. Somewhere far off in a corner of my mind I realize that I must be screaming, but all I see is that red and feel the fiery lance of pain shoot up those webs that have tortured me so. The wolf releases me abruptly with a whimper – and then there's an arrow through its neck. As it falls I grab a hold of its slick, bloody coat with my uninjured hand without conscious thought for what I'm doing. Those lines in my skin glow brighter while the wolf's body shrivels into nothing more than fur clinging to half-exposed bones. I'm watching, feeling sick and lightheaded with the pain, as the flesh in my torn forearm mends itself together with every quick pulse of those red webs.

When I release the wolf the lines of blood magic fade into the faint shimmer I'm used to seeing them as. I look up at the rest of the wolves – the battle is over. Every wolf has been killed. I notice there's an unnatural silence and that everyone is staring at me – everyone, even Sten, is looking at me like I'm about to spontaneously grow a second head or something.

"I am certain of it now – those blood mages have grafted abilities akin to that of a reaver into our seer," Morrigan announces clearly as the flames from her hands die out slowly. Her staff is laying by her feet, and there's an impaled wolf corpse on one end.

"We'll discuss this later!" Sloane groans in pain from the ground he's collapsed on, "Bodahn – where are our injury kits?"

* * *

_A/N: Action in this chapter! :o And we're getting closer to the Dalish! It's a big deal guys. :D  
_


	7. Chapter 7

_"I am certain of it now – those blood mages have grafted abilities akin to that of a reaver into our seer," Morrigan announces clearly as the flames from her hands die out slowly. Her staff is laying by her feet, and there's an impaled wolf corpse on one end._

* * *

"What do you mean I'm a Reaver?" Everyone who was injured - Sloane, Alistair, Randall, and Sten, quickly patched themselves up before we moved to find a place to set up a hasty camp near a small stream. Those wolves took out chunks of flesh and Morrigan only knows a little bit of healing. She keeps grousing that her mother was a better healer than her, though she is healing the others willingly. And I'm helping her since I mentioned that I know a little bit of what to do since I am- was an assistant to a... non-magical healer. I couldn't sit there and not do anything while they're all bleeding and in pain, illusion or not. Leliana's getting the supplies while me and Morrigan take off armor before removing any dirt and... fangs from all the warrior's wounds. I remember just before... whatever happened to me... a friend of mine complaining about her ER rotation and how she's not looking forward to trauma - degloving, burns, head injuries. Well, I'm getting a lesson on that now. There's so much blood. I'm almost used to the sight now. But... I'll never see my friends again, will I? Well, maybe I will, but it'll be in the psych ward.

I'm holding a cloth to Alistair's leg while Morrigan digs a broken fang from Alistair's calf with her long nails when I asked that question about the reaver-ness. Probably a bad time, but I'm all out of sorts. And I need to talk about something - I know focusing on your pain is a bad thing. Talking and listening helps distract you from what you don't want to be focusing on.

"Do not be so simple minded as to not understand,"Morrigan sniffles her answer. "Twas a fact proven when you had made an aura of pain – a powerful one at last. It had affected everyone over a large area - ally and foe. I, however, nullified your aura on all others of our party with my own healing aura. It was not comfortable, although I must say it made killing those foul beasts much simpler with them crippled at our feet."

She pulls out the fang with a cruel smile of satisfaction on her lips the same time Alistair grunts and bites down hard onto the leather of his glove. I move the cloth up higher to mop up the blood while she drips health poultice onto the gushing, ragged wound. I can't look away, even as Morrigan starts talking again. "As for when you healed yourself – that is a skill best known as devour. It is when your own life source takes in the energies from another's to heal yourself and replenish your strength. I have only a literary understanding of the skill, so that is the extent of my knowledge of it. I cannot tell you more to sate that curiosity about you." She gives me a scathing glance, "Now can you stop with these inane questions? I do not wish to expend my energies healing these fools any longer than I must." She brings up a faintly blue glowing hand to the coagulating blood on Alistair's leg and leaves it there until a pink, slightly scabbed and pitted piece of skin is visible when I rub off the excess blood. Morrigan's almost being civil with me. I wonder why?

It takes some time, but eventually everyone is healed up – even the mabari. They're still tired though, but Sloane insists that we don't lose any time and continue on. If we don't hurry the darkspawn could overwhelm us. I'm afraid... I'm afraid of this reality my mind has placed me in.

"Do you mind if Randall sits with you? He's tuckered out," Sloane asks while he hefts his brown-furred mabari into the back of the cart with the dog's claws digging into the wood. He didn't even give me a chance to answer.

"I guess," I narrow my eyes at him half-heartedly.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. You like him. You were being very gentle with him when you were tending to his wounds," Sloane smiles a little.

I just shake my head and pet Randall when he pads over to me. He sits by my feet with a heavy plop. "You're not like how I thought you'd be," I think aloud, still petting the mabari when the cart starts to move with a jerk of the ox pulling on the reins.

"Me or Randall?" Sloane asks and I look over to him while he walks along to the side of the cart with a slight limp and one arm held too close to his body. Sten was injured worse than him, but it was still bad.

I'm starting to regret my thoughtlessness in saying that aloud, since now I have to try to explain. "You – you're not as angry or upset with humans as I thought you'd be. Cause of the way you grew up." It doesn't make sense to me when I think about it. I'd always thought that the City Elf Origin would've been more angry with the world. Maybe Sloane's reactions are indications that this whole place isn't real?

He purses his lips, "There are a fair bit of humans I don't care for," he admits, "but I'm not daft enough to believe all humans are the same. My mother held the Wardens in high esteem, and I still haven't decided what to think of everyone else."

"Who?" I ask suddenly curious.

"You, Leliana or Morrigan," he tics off his fingers with a thoughtful look about him. "We're working together at least, and it wouldn't do anyone good if I hated all of you on principle. You're not the humans I hate, and I haven't seen you judge me for my ears," he answers honestly with the ghost of a self-depreciating smile playing over his features.

"I've always liked elves," I admit a little shyly in embarrassment. Another thing I'll probably regret blurting. "Your culture is interesting... more than mine, anyways. And the stories about your people... the alienages are terrible." The history on elves the game's writers had created had always grabbed my attention when I'd played the game. It doesn't surprise me that I'd be stuck with an elven Warden if my mind thought all this up on its own.

"That is more than true," he nods his head in agreement and then smirks deviously. "And what's this about _liking_ elves?" His tone implies something, well... more than just liking.

"Oh, shut up that's not what I meant," I think I might be blushing. "I just like... oh my God – shut up!" I huff at him in a mixture of embarrassment and exasperation. I embarrass way to easily for my own good.

"I'm not saying anything though Karie," he says with laughter in his voice. He was making a face though. "Maybe we can find you a nice Dalish man who can take that aura of pain you have."

"Shut up!" I hiss thoroughly embarrassed. "Jesus Christ – that's not what I meant!"

He's openly laughing at me now – great. "I'm just pulling your leg," he sobers slowly. "And who's this Jesus Christ?"

"Uh, a guy from, um. I'm not Andrastian. Instead of cursing and saying Andraste, I curse with Jesus... I'm explaining this bad. Um..." I fidget under his curious gaze. "I just say some things differently – you can ignore it."

"As you wish," he concedes still smiling at me. "Do you know where we find the Dalish?"

"Do ya have a map?" I reply a little bit more calmly, and relieved that he'd changed the topic.

He rifles through the largest pouch on his belt before handing me a folded piece of paper, err, parchment. I open it and point it towards him so he can see when I circle the area I vaguely remember having that symbol for the Dalish on it from the game with the tip of my finger. "Around here."

"Ah," he squints his eyes at the paper. "We should reach them by the end of the week then." He looks up and he's still smiling at me. "You won't be ogling all the Dalish while we're there, now will you?"

"Oh my God – I will smack you," I pretend to threaten, and then a completely random thought occurs to me that I blurt, again. "I do want to pet a halla though."

* * *

I'm petting that halla by the end of the week, just like Sloane said we would. Well, not pet halla, but find the Dalish. Things went as expected when we arrived in the aravel-filled clearing, but I don't think Sloane was expecting that the infection I'd told him about would be lycanthropy and the cure would be Witherfang's heart. The look on his face was priceless.

"You're so sweet," I gush at the halla. "Now you let this lady take care of you, okay? She just wants to help you," I mutter to the halla as I pet from in between its ears to its snout. The fur is coarse and short – smooth one direction, and a little itchy the other. The halla I'm petting is that scared one that the halla caretaker asks for help with in the game. I wondered off from the others, I've seen all this before and have no wish to see it again, and found the halla's pen.

"You are a natural with halla," the Dalish woman says to me. I forget her name, and I didn't ask it. "For a shemlen you are quite gentle." That's nice... reverse racism right there?

"Uh, thanks ma'am," I mumble while I'm still petting this cool ass mystical-deer-thing – it's like a unicorn and a deer had a baby. It's so awesome. I wonder if this is a product of my own imaginings, or the game? It's a little different than what I remember the halla to look like, and strikingly similar to animals I've petted before when I was sane and back home.

I turn my head over my shoulder when I hear a bark behind me rather suddenly, and see Randall happily bounding down the incline towards me full speed. "Karie!" Sloane exclaims from behind his dog, and it sounds like he's a little out of breath. Looks it too. "I should have known you'd be with the halla. You had us all frightened."

I blink owlishly at him, hand still on the halla's nose, "I scared you?" I didn't know these people, real or not, cared enough to worry about me. I've only been stuck here a little while.

"Yes," he huffs once he's an arm length's away form me, and Randall's sniffling my bare feet with his big, wet nose. "We had thought something... untoward... happened to you," he frowns.

I look away in shame, and move my fingers off of the halla to thread them together instead. "I'm sorry, but I already knew what Keeper Zathrian would say, and I... wanted to pet a halla. I'm sorry," I apologize again and look up at him. My eyes move over his sharp features in consideration for a moment before I ask, "We're going after Witherfang's heart, right?" He nods in answer. "I have some things I should tell you guys before we go."

* * *

_A/N: Sorry about getting this out to you guys so late in the week - busy RL. :/ Hope it was worth the wait though! :D  
_


	8. Chapter 8

_"We're going after Witherfang's heart, right?" He nods in answer. "I have some things I should tell you guys before we go."_

* * *

We'd already fought some werewolves before we found the Dalish, or rather everyone else did and I kinda freaked out and accidentally did an aura of pain again. It's... so bizarre. It's painful, so much so that I feel right on the edge of either passing out or vomiting, but it's like a self-defense mechanism of some kind. I can't control it, it just _happens _and it only comes about when I'm threatened. I have to assume it's something to protect me, or instead it's my subconscious just fucking with me. I'm honestly leaning towards the latter. The shiny red lines in my skin are probably a physical manifestation of some sort of inner pain I'm blind to. I guess there was a real reason for that goth period in college after all, and not just stress and a diet completely comprised of granola bars and energy drinks.

I've thought on other things in the days we were traveling through the Brecillian too. And in regards to my sanity and the real probability of this world, I may be more confused than I ever was before, I think. The reality of this world is stark and contrasting to anything I can think to compare it to – to anything other than the world I know to be real. The details, sensations... and there's so much I can't explain in words properly. There's things you just have to see in person for it solidify in your mind as something that's even remotely possible. Like magic – it's so different than what it seems like in the game. It has a physical presence about it, like smoke or fog, and yet acts against basic physical laws – gravity, inertia, and even basic biology it completely ignores. I'd never seen someone turn themselves into a giant spider before, then how come I can imagine up something so strange in my psychosis? There's no flash of light, and then _bam_ Morrigan is a spider. It's gradual and so, so incredible to look at.

I keep flip-flopping between what I think is real and what isn't, but that's not what I need to be thinking about now. The werewolves need to be dealt with, and if I'm here – I'm here and going to _do _something and not just wish for something to happen or let something bad happen. I _really_ want to wake up, but I'm afraid of my death here – even if it means being back home. Death would be painful, wouldn't it? And I don't know exactly if death here is the road to sanity and reality. I'm not sure that's a risk I'm willing to take. Death, if I'm wrong, is a permanent thing that I don't wish for myself any time soon.

Regardless, we're now just outside the Dalish's camp. I have things I need to say for my own benefit, and the others' here with me. I'm throwing caution to the wind and telling what I can remember of this. I didn't want to say these things around the Dalish, in case the Keeper would... be upset, or affronted, or something.

I turn to the group and look at the people I've surrounded myself with, whether consciously or not. "The werewolves aren't just animals," I start and take a breath. "Most of 'em are the decedents of humans that were turned into werewolves by Zathrian. The Keeper's hundreds of years old."

"How can that be possible?" Alistair asks with a bewildered look about him.

"My mother tis just as old, if her stories are to be believed," Morrigan says just a_ little_ snidely. "Prolonging one's life is not outside the realm of possible." I'd always thought it wasn't, but whatever.

I feel my brow crinkle as I start up again, "Zathrian's alive so long as Witherfang's alive. The Keeper summoned a forest spirit and bound her to a wolf – making lycanthropy," I continue and try to explain. "He did all that to infect the humans that raped and killed his daughter and his son. His daughter lived though, but killed herself when she found out she was pregnant by one of the humans that raped her."

"That is horrible," Leliana breathes with a stricken expression that had completely washed the color out of her cheeks. "I can sympathize with what he did, though now... it has become uncontrollable. His own people are falling to this curse."

I nod in agreement, "The werewolves that are alive now aren't even the ones that did all that – they're just their children's children. They're sick of the curse, and angry at Zathrian, so they're attacking the elves. They're infecting them to try and make Zathrian do something about it."

"And what do we do about it?" Sloane asks while he paces shortly. His expression is troubled. What happened to Zathrian's children might be a little too close to home for him, come to think about it. "We need Witherfang's heart, according to the Keeper." He stops pacing and looks at me sharply, "Will that kill him too? You said their lives are tied together."

I shake my head, "No, it doesn't, but then the werewolves will attack... and they'll all have to be killed," I say with a harsh frown turning the corners of my lips down. "I know a way to fix all this so no one dies, well, no one that has to die for this to be stopped."

"Well, what is it then?" Sloane asks impatiently with a huff of his breath and his arms crossed along his chest.

I take another deep breath when my frown thins itself out, "We have to talk to the Lady of the Forest - that's the spirit that's bound to Witherfang. She'll ask us to speak to Zathrian and end this peacefully. If we get him to talk to her, they can end the curse without a fight. But then both of them will die to end it."

"Someone will die any which way we go about this though?" Sloane asks with a raised brow, and I nod. "That's rubbish," he rakes a hand through his messy mop of hair in clear frustration. "I suppose we have no alternatives though."

I shift my weight and continue with complete honestly, "That's the best solution I've seen. It's the only way that I know that neither all the elves nor all the werewolves die."

He nods in acceptance after a short pause in thought, "Then we'll do that." He turns on his heels partially to address the rest of the group, "No one try to kill any werewolves that can be spared – I want as many of them cured as we can manage."

"There's a woman in the forest," I offer with slight hesitation and a nervous flex of my fingers against the hem of my tunic," She's an elf, and she'd recently changed into a werewolf. She's in a lot of pain, and she'll ask us to kill her for mercy." I pause and look up at Sloane directly with what I'm sure is a pathetic pleading look on my face, "If we can knock her out, or maybe if Morrigan can put her asleep with a spell, she can be cured. I think she can, anyways," I finish in a soft mumble. I had always wished there was a way to save her in the game.

"We'll try to spare her," Sloane reassures with a small, warm smile. "We'll spare however many werewolves we can."

The journey starts out simple enough though, killing and disabling things and watching the gruesome acts with a measure of shock and sickness, but I'd forgotten to mention the gigantic walking trees – and they surprise everyone but me. Alistair had found and bought me a pair of soft leather boots before we left the Dalish camp, and I'm thankful for it when one of the tree's roots wraps around my ankle and pulls me hard enough to smack my head against the packed earth and disorient me momentarily. I'm the only defenseless one that went with them all – because I know what happens, and I know how to get to the ruins too. We had left Bodahn, Sandal, and the cart back at the Dalish's camp because the trails weren't good for the cart's wheels, and Bodahn had wanted to trade with the Dalish too. There's some things I can't explain well enough for them to understand though. It's difficult to explain that weird barrier thing and how you pass through it and don't end up on the other side...

But the tree's angry at me, and it's just so... incredibly strange to have a fucking tree _growl_ at you. Crazy shit right there. Stunned as I am, I'm very thankful when Morrigan sets it on fire, because I totally froze up. Those red webs in my skin didn't even light up I was so shocked while I looked up at the thing with fear and awe intermixed.

"We are wasting time," Sten huffs after he literally cuts the tree in half, and then removes his blade with seemingly no effort at all. Someone found him a great-sword, and the guy definitely knows how to use it. "We will have more enemies as they turn, unless we progress further." He _might _have the tiniest scowl creasing his face. It's a small movement, but it's still intimidating, and more so than the tree.

"Where do we go next Karie?" Sloane asks me while he wipes sweat from his brow, and the action and question helpfully distracts me from the huge qunari.

"There's a giant talking tree that can get us past this magical barrier if we get his acorn back from this crazy guy – and then we'll find the ruins," I say from my half-prone position on the ground. I'm still so shocked despite it all – that tree had a face! "All that probably sounded really nuts, but it happens."

* * *

_A/N: In-game events! Not quite like the game. I skip around a lot. *sigh* I've very recently put a lot of thought into the sequel, since I'm very, very close to finishing my master version of TE, and I think the sequel is going to have a lot more reader involvement. Like polls for major events and stuff! I'm sure you guys can't wait! :P_


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Guys, this chapter's very important to the storyline - so it's much longer than all the previous chapters. Enjoy._

* * *

I remember my way around the ruins – I was so proud of myself for like a whole ten minutes, until we were attacked by gigantic, and poisonous, spiders. They're hairy, drooling things that are ridiculously creepy and mean. I've backed into a side room to hide while everyone else fights those nasty creatures. One had spit poison on me and it burnt and ate through the skin on my shoulder with a green smoke and a harsh acidic smell. It hurt so much that I went into a blind rage, that's all I can think to call that mindlessness, and drained the spider that spat at me into a... husk of a thing with the weird blood magic-reaver webs in my skin. Once I was throughly disgusted with myself and completely healed, I regained enough sense to get myself out of harms way and hide. I don't know how to fight. I know well enough not to put myself in that situation any longer than I must.

The sounds of battle last a few tense moments more, and when I can't hear the spider's... hissing anymore I peer around the room's corner to see Leliana gathering what arrows she can, and everyone else shaking off black and green... goo from their weapons. Morrigan has a pretty bad looking burn on her arm too, the red raggedness a stark contrast to her paleness, and I watch her healing it with her magic and squeezing her luminous eyes shut at the pain as she does so. Those are some awful spiders.

"Lady seer, where have you gone off to?" I hear Alistair call out, and I walk to the decrepit room's barely existent doorway to wave at him in answer.

"Over here," I clasp my hands together in slight nervousness. "Are all of those things dead?"

"As dead as dead can be," Sloane sheathes his daggers at his belt in a practiced movement. "Is there anything useful in that room?" He asks while he walks towards me with a slight limp with one leg. "We could use more elfroot – even to chew on. That venom is a vile thing."

I look up from where I was looking at his leg and turn around to walk further into the room in an effort to answer his question, "No. I-" I cut myself off abruptly as something occurs to me, "I remember this room though."

I practically run to the far right corner of the room after I utter those words, and move rubble and dirt until I find what I'm looking for – that soul gem with the elf trapped inside. I know that elf's there, and when I find the gem a pleased smile spreads across my face when I pick it up in triumph. The periwinkle colored sludge inside of the diamond-cut gem moves sluggishly at my touch. The gem itself is a little warm and vibrating just slightly in the palm of my hand. I can feel the vibrations travel all the way up my arm, and I startle almost hard enough to drop it when I hear an accented, soft feminine voice speak elvish at me in my head after the feeling. I know it to be elvish because I can pick out a few words that I remember of the language invented for the game.

"I don't know what you're saying," I say aloud to it in stunned fascination. "I don't know elvish."

_"Oh," _she says at me in my head now in a language I can understand. _"I __am __sorry. __I __did __not __realize __you __were __human."_

"I am," I reply. "And you're a Dalish Arcane Warrior. You've been stuck in this gem for hundreds of years, haven't you?"

_"Yes," _she sighs. _"My __name... __it __is __Aereweld. __I __have __not __forgotten __it. __What __is __your __name __friend?"_

"I'm Karie." I smile down at the gem that I'm watching. The sludge in it moves about at both my words and hers.

_"You __are __one __of __the __dragon-kin, __but __different." _Her disembodied voice has a curious tone to it now._ "__You __have __not __taken __the __dragon's __blood, __yet __you __have __their __spirit; __their __power. __How __did __you __obtain __that __then?"_

"You mean my reaver skills," my smile turns quickly into a frown, and I can barely hear the others talking from behind me since I'm so focused on the gem in my hand. I don't really know _why_ I'm talking to the thing, other than I can and it has me completely enraptured. "Blood mages did this to me. I don't know how. But... how'd you know I'm a Reaver?"

_"I __can __sense __the __power __in __your __touch," _she answers with a certainty carried in those few words. _"I __can __also __sense __your __disquiet, __friend. __I __would __like __to __help __you, __in __return __for __a __favor, __but __first__ – __it __would __be __easier __to __communicate __on __a __different __plane. __One __we __can __both __see."_

I'm silent for a moment at her strange words, and then my world turns white, not black, with a bizarre frazzling sensation that's a stark similarity to the pain I feel from the lines in my skin. I'm so terribly confused when everything I see before me is just this stark white - everything but a petite dark skinned elven woman with leaf-green markings tattooed on her oval-shaped face. Her wild hair is brushed back and her clothes are an odd mixture of metal and cloth. She has a sword at her hip and a twisted wooden staff at her back.

"Aneth ara lethallan - may I call you that? It seems like we know each other already," she smiles impishly after bowing shortly at her waist with one arm crossed against her armored chest.

"Umm... Sure," I reply softly and look around. I'm stunned. What's happening any more? Have I really lost it now? Lost in my mind _in_ my mind - like that stupid movie Inception? Though this reminds me of that scene in the Matrix more... "What happened?" I blurt.

"I have transported our spirits to a sleeper-free plane of the Beyond - one void of nothing but the essence of the Beyond. Accessible to those only with a deep connection to the Beyond, as I happen to be in this form." She walks closer to me, and I can see how muscular she is beneath the fit of her elaborate outfit. She's definitely an Arcane Warrior. "You are the first soul I have spoken with in... well, I don't know how long. Too long. There are times when I can barely remember myself." She frowns harshly. She's standing less than an arm's reach away from me now and still sways closer once she starts talking again. "I do know who, or rather, _what_ you are though, lethallan. You do not hail from this side of the Beyond."

My completely dumbfounded and bewildered silence must give her incentive to explain, because she does, "There are twists in the fabric of the Beyond - tendrils and ripples that flow to other places of existence. You are not from this one, this one we call Thedas, but yet here you are," she tilts her head at me in contemplation. "You must be blessed by Elgar'nan himself to have not been destroyed during your travel here. How did you get here, I wonder? It is linked to this, isn't it?" She raises one delicate hand clad in fingerless gloves to my cheek, and traces a vein of blood magic that I know to be there just beneath my skin. "Who did this to you lethallan? Who mangled the dragon-kin's gifts and forced their creation into you?"

"There were... there were," my head is whirling and for some inexplicable reason I'm still answering her question. "Three blood mages. They're dead now. Sloane killed them."

"One must have made a deal with an ill spirit of fear, yes, there is no other explanation for this. No other creature in the Beyond would dare such a thing - tempering with the fabric of the Beyond. It can rip, just as any fabric, and then chaos would ensue." She puts all her fingers to my cheek then, "I have not had a companionable touch in years. You are a good woman, and you do not deserve such abominable acts on you."

How can anything of what this... this apparition is saying to me possibly be true? So much said and disproved, or proved, with just a few words... It can't be true, can it? Then how come I'm believing it? Why am I so quick to accept that I'm not crazy, just that something crazy happened to me? Is it fool's hope? "Can I go home?" I whisper to the elven woman and feel the hot sting of tears welling in my eyes. I'm getting overwhelmed again.

"I'm afraid, but... I do not think that is possible, lethallan. This spirit of fear must have destroyed itself in bringing you here. No spirit can exist for long outside a tendril of the Beyond - whether that tendril is the Beyond itself or in a vessel tethered to it, like any mage-born. You are forever here, lethallan," she whispers with a sadness in her voice that's too horrible not to be genuine. "I am sorry."

"So I'm not crazy?" I'm openly crying now, and she wipes the tears from my cheeks as they fall. "I'm really here? This is real? How can I believe that?"

"In time you may," she rests both her hands on my cheeks. "I can help you understand, lethallan, in exchange for your promise to aid me. I wish oblivion, you must understand. I have lived long past my time."

"I-" my voice cracks. I'm drowning in my thoughts. How can what she's saying be true? Any of it? I had thought... but it was foolish to think of this as reality, isn't it? "How can you help me understand? I-I don't."

"I can gift you my knowledge – all of it. I can give this to you here, in this plane of the Beyond. In my time, I understood the subtleties of existence and life far better than most – that is how I knew I could preserve my soul in a blessed gem in order to save myself. I had only to wait for someone to release me, so I could return to my body, but none came. _Please_," she says roughly, "I understand more than you think, lethallan – I only ask that you destroy the gem and set me free in return," her violet-colored eyes are shining in her desperation. "I can even teach you my trade, though you are dragon-kin and not mage-born and could not use all my knowledge in that regard. You would know swordsmanship if you do not already, lethallan, and you could learn to truly harness your ill-wrought gifts with this knowledge – I promise you. Please set me free, I beg of you."

"Do whatever you want," I gasp. I can't... I can't focus. I can't think. But her nails are digging into my face and she looks so upset, so desperate, I can't ignore it.

"Thank you lethallan," she soothes the pads of her fingers over the red marks she made on my face. She then slowly wraps her arms around my back in a loose hug, "I will not prolong my gifts, lethallan. I wish death."

Images... so many images pass through my mind's eye with every breath I take. Sounds, tastes, feelings, even emotions surge within me with every image. It feels as though it's me, but with every image my hands are dark and inked in green – these are Aereweld's memories. Not mine. Her knowledge she's passed into me, and yet as it's done it feels like my own. These images are accompanied by the conversations of people that seem familiar, but aren't. A dark hand holding a light one and a fluttering feeling of hope and desire passes blissfully through me. An eagle's flight and the feelings of joy as the breeze from its wings passes overhead is refreshing. A... tome with symbols and a language I do not recognize, yet I can fully understand is frustrating. Even a brutal battlefield littered with dead, familiar faces – their own blood covering more of their skin than the sun is cold and stabs sharper than any blade. The feelings of sadness, horror, and shame are nearly too much to bear at that point. And then I see the blade protruding from a bloodied stomach. The pain is cold and sickening. The shock is electrifying.

"_It is done_," I hear Aereweld whisper when the images pass and are replaced with so much white. _"Release me when you awaken. Please lethallan."_

I feel myself come to with a gasp - "Aereweld!" I exclaim and sit up coughing on heavily incensed air. I'm back to myself. I can feel it - my body feels heavy and slow in comparison to my mind.

"Karie!" Someone shouts in return, though it is not Aereweld's soft voice. My thoughts are coming too quickly for me to recognize the voice, and the sensations I'm feeling are too overwhelming for me to process. My vision is blurry when I look around briefly, but then I see Aereweld's periwinkle gemstone in my fist and my attention is quickly focused on it. My knuckles are white and my palm is bloodied from how strongly I'm holding that stone to me. My blood against the purple of the stone is all I can look at.

"Get the Keeper!" That same voice shouts. "She's awake!"

"Aereweld!" I shout at the stone in a cracking voice. "I can't do magic – how am I supposed to set you free?!"

"Perhaps I can help with that, falon," I turn my head and my vision I focuses on... Lanaya, that has to be her. She's standing by my feet, and I'm laying on... furs?

"Aereweld – she's stuck in this soul gem," I explain in my mania. I hope the Dalish mage understands. "She made me promise to set her free – I saw... I know how. A crushing prison spell, please. _Please_ help me – she... she just doesn't want to be trapped like this anymore." Every feeling Aereweld ever felt passed through me, became my own – even her desperation for death. For an end she has been denied for so long. "Asha mana – melvana. Asha din'isala. Asha ensansal emma. Asha souveri. Asha din'uth. Sahlin, Lanaya. Halam sahlin, Keeper." I take a deep breath after my pleas and I cradle that last bit of Aereweld to my chest in my aching hand. "_Please_."

Lanaya blinks slowly, and what color she had on her pale skin has completely disappeared. She visibly swallows before she answers in a shaking breath, "I will help you, falon, but you must tell me what's happened here."

* * *

_Translations (some are roughly translated):  
_

_Aneth ara: a friendly greeting  
_

_Lethallan: "clansman"; a familiar, casual reference_

_Elgar'nan: the Dalish God of Vengence  
_

_Asha mana – melvana: "A woman from long past - a long time ago"  
_

_Asha din'isala: "She has not died"_

_Asha ensansal emma: "She wants me to gift her this"  
_

_Asha souveri: "She is tired"_

_Asha din'uth: "She should not be eternal"_

_Sahlin: "Now"_

_Halam sahlin: "End it now"_

_Falon: "friend"_


	10. Chapter 10

They did it – they did it without me. They convinced Zathrian to end the curse peacefully with the Lady. They did it without me because I was unresponsive while Aereweld gave me all her memories, and with it her knowledge. I understand now. Nothing is beyond the scope of possible, some people believe that and that's what's happened here – with me.

Aereweld was a member of an ancient guild of mages that had tried to make the impossible possible. She did research on life preservation and the trans-dimensional properties of the soul. They didn't call it that though. They called it the multiple-planes of existence. She, along with four others – one of whom was her lover – discovered how to store a person's essence into a gemstone with unique properties. Gemstones that were 'vessels of the Beyond' they called them. Soul gems. One of her guild members discovered that the Beyond transversed what they considered reality, and touched places that only the strongest of demons or spirits could see. The member that discovered this was a spirit healer, one who had a deep connection with a spirit of empathy. Some of these places the Beyond's fabric reached to are what's known as the Eternal City, the place of the afterlife, and other 'sides' of the Beyond where people existed. It's alternate reality theory stuff – trans-dimensional travel via a place void of time and space. The Beyond is never ending, yet with some unexplainable solid fluidity, like a piece of silk, and basic rules of the world, like time, do not apply there. The closest thing I can think of is a black-hole. Maybe the 'tendrils' that reach other planes of the Beyond are black-holes... I don't know, but Aereweld seemed to think I'd traveled along one of these tendrils and ended up here – in Thedas. With the help of an 'ill spirit' – a demon.

I was the prisoner of blood mages. Maybe one, or all three of them, were powerful enough to do something like that. Maybe they were powerful enough to find someone who knew of this plane through the game and could protect them from the Archdemon like they wanted. And that's why they made me a reaver – so I wouldn't be defenseless. Because why wouldn't they be able to find someone who had played the game? We know of this world through an interactive story, and perhaps they knew of ours my some similar means. It's possible there are an infinite amount of alternate realities – and each story told could possibly exist somewhere sometime. That every reality you could ever think of could theoretically be a reality in a different dimension. I've heard these theories before. It's possible even those blood mages could've had a way to single out someone who played the game – and it had just so happened to be me. Maybe in this version of Thedas that was possible, and it happened. I get a headache just thinking about it – thinking about just how horribly wrong this is.

It shouldn't be possible, but it apparently is.

I try to explain this to Keeper Lanaya, like she had asked. She set Aereweld free with her crushing prison spell – the arcane warrior can finally die and pass on to the afterlife. She believes her soul will travel to another plane of existence. She'll be reunited with her lover. She deserves peace regardless of the outcome.

All the Dalish mage's thoughts, knowledge, memories, and feelings have been put into my head. I've been implanted with the knowledge of her entire person – or at least what wasn't lost over time. Some things are fuzzy – mostly her childhood, but the things she was passionate about are clear. Things that she was proud of, excited about, and things that she loved. Aereweld had lost her mind in that gemstone. The person I had met was just a shadow of who she once was. She was a powerful mage, high ranking, and a scholar. She was also a veteran of a war the Dalish were fighting allied to the humans for. She didn't remember the threat, but she'd remembered how her blade has sung and her magic had destroyed.

She didn't know why her soul gem was never found. The most likely explanation she could think of was that all the people that knew of the soul gems, and how to use them, were dead.

"You're not from here," Sloane drawls after I've explained. He was the one I had heard calling my name when I had woke up from the Beyond, but I couldn't recognize his voice in my hysteria. "I'm no mage, but that sounds absolutely outrageous."

"It is actually quite common knowledge - other planes of existence," Lanaya points out calmly. "Spirits can't exist here without being brought to this side of the Beyond, and the same would go for other living creatures that are from different sides. They would have to be brought over too."

There's a pause before I speak again, "I thought I was crazy," I confess. "And maybe I still am. Even knowing all this... I-I still don't know if I can believe it."

"Falon," Lanaya frowns at me. "I have barely been Keeper for more than a day, but know that even though you are not Dalish in body - you are in spirit. Seek guidance in the Creators, and if you need council please speak to me."

"You're from a different world entirely," Sloane rudely ignores Lanaya in favor of scrutinizing me. "What is this world you're from called then? What is it like?"

"We call our world Earth," I answer softly.

"Like dirt," he sniffles.

I almost smile at that, "Yeah, dirt. There's no elves there. Or qunari. We only have humans and some dwarves, I guess. We consider our dwarves human too though. And we don't have magic."

"No elves, qunari, or magic," he tics off his fingers. "That sounds rather boring now, doesn't it?"

"I guess," I frown. "I know Thedas from a story. This whole time has been written back home - we even have artwork." I'm not going to bother explaining a gaming system or computer.

"So you're not really a seer then," he concludes and squints his eyes critically at me.

"No," I answer simply.

"But you are a reaver," he points out.

"Yeah - cause of those blood mages. Aereweld, she... I know how to fight now because of her. I-I think I can use a sword," I bite my lip nervously. This is real isn't it? I'm going to have to fight to save myself.

"Excellent," he pushes himself off of the stool he was sitting on to stand. "It seems those blood mages only concerned themselves with the Archdemon, but neglected to think of how they could protect themselves from the Wardens," he smiles a bit. "I'm glad we whisked you away from them, Karie. You will, and have been, an asset to our cause. I hope you'll continue to aid us...?"

I nod. What else am I supposed to do? Hide somewhere and wait out the Blight? That's ridiculous... I'll, well, now I have to help them, don't I? My conscious would get to me if I left now.

"I will help you falon," Lanaya puts a hand on my shoulder briefly in comfort. "Allow the Dalish to repay your lot's kindness - we will see to it that you are all outfitted and given what we can spare. We owe so many lives to you."

* * *

_A/N: Filler-ish chapter, but with some must needed explanations. 'Aereweld' is a character I've adapted from Apollo Wings' character 'Meddolwen' in our co-authored story posted on deviantart, A Joint Journey (the link is on my profile if you're curious). Meddolwen has made appearances in Apollo's other fics too - check them out if you're interested!  
_


	11. Chapter 11

I decide I ought go to Lanaya after I've visited the craftsman with everyone else. I blindly follow the others to the man at the Keeper and Sloane's behest, and now I'm wearing studded leather armor. I look... medieval now, I guess. Leliana cut my hair, it wasn't salvageable, but the pixi-bob she made it into is the shortest I've ever had it. And the sword I have strapped to my hip is awkward to have, but necessary. It has a rune in it to make it super light for speed, which is good since I have no muscle tone to speak of - even before the blood mages starved me and erased all marks from my skin to have a clean slate with which to inject their blood magic into. It's a bastard sword, I know at least that much from my weapons junkies dad and grandpa, and it's a split blade. A green blade. I'm a little afraid I'll hurt myself with it; it's also quite sharp.

The sword and armor are necessary now, because, well, I know how to use them. Just meeting one person changed me so much. Aereweld changed me. She's in my head now, but I'm not crazy. As funny as that sounds, her thoughts have granted me clarity. I can't think on it too much though, instead I'm focusing on the here and now, because if I dwell on it over much I may just have that psychotic break I had thought I was experiencing originally.

Shit. I'm thinking about it.

Will I ever find my way home? Aereweld didn't think it was possible. There's still a chance though, isn't there? No matter how slim. I'll never see my friends or family ever again then? I never even said goodbye. It's almost certain that I'll never see them though, right? I can't even fully grasp that, as I've been surrounded by those people practically every day of my life. I can only imagine what my sudden disappearance would've done to them. It would've been confusion at the doctor's office when I didn't show up for work, and the doctor or his wife would have likely called my emergency contact, my mom, when they couldn't get a hold of me. Then it would've gone down-hill from there, and I can only imagine the desperation and shock that those I see or talk to every day would have suffered when I suddenly was gone without any explanation or possible reason. How soon would they call the cops and report me missing? How long would it take them before they gave up on finding me? Never?

I'd go back if I could. In a heart-beat. This might be some amazing, reality-defying thing that happened to me despite the blood magic, but I miss home. The constant, electrifying sounds of darkspawn and Blight-tainted animals always in the distance, the fucking trees everywhere that are so different from the city I'm from, and the simple knowledge that this is a war and there are people dying practically every minute. I can't get the sound of bone crunching beneath steel out of my head, or the sight of so much blood and black ichor smeared on leather and fur.

I'm forced to live this now - this is my reality. As much as I wish for things to change, they won't. I have to abide by Aerweld's knowledge and wisdom if I'm to have a chance at survival. I have to accept this. I have to wear the armor all day, I have to strap the sword to my belt, and I have to have my hair cut for helmet-wear. Just with these simple things I'm so different. I'm not me anymore, am I?

"It is a shame I had to cut so much," Leliana comments while she combs my hair. She's trying to style it. I told her it doesn't matter, because it'll just turn into a wavy mess in a few hours.

"Yeah, but it was gross," I look at her over my shoulder and welcome the distraction from my solemn thoughts. "It's seriously just going to get frizzy in this wind. You don't have to mess with it."

Her hands pause and she sighs while she removes the comb, "I had overheard what had happened to you," she confesses quietly. "The tent you were in was large – but it was still canvas. I would not be surprised if near half the camp knew of your... predicament."

"Awesome," I sigh in irritation. The last thing I need is a bunch of people looking at me strangely and pitying me over something that cannot be undone or changed. I don't want that kind of attention on me. I take a breath and squeeze my eyes shut to calm myself. I'm not close enough to Leliana to be bitchy with her. She wouldn't understand that I don't mean any of it – that I just need to vent.

"Just... know," she continues hesitantly, "that I am still sworn as a member of the Chantry, and can hold all you say in the highest confidence if you need someone to speak with."

"I'm going to talk to Lanaya," I say as I stand up abruptly, and when I do I realize that must've looked and sounded bad. "I mean, she just gave me all this stuff, and she... I'm, sorry," I fumble. "I'm a mess right now. Thanks for help with my hair. Maybe... maybe I'll talk to you later." I shift my weight uncomfortably, "You... remind me of one of my sisters," I confess in an awkward attempt to compliment the woman and soothe any feelings I may have hurt with my carelessness.

"Oh?" She raises a brow, "And how many sisters do you have?"

"Two," dammit. And now I'm thinking about them. I'm not going to cry again. "You remind me of the youngest one. She would cut my hair for me too."

"Ah," she smiles sadly. "Go and speak with the Keeper then. I will chat with you later."

"Thanks," I say quickly, before I hurry off from where we were sitting on a log on the outside of the camp.

"Falon," Lanaya greets me with a bob of her head once I find her inside the Dalish's camp. The elves that were infected with the lycanthropy still aren't feeling the best, and Lanaya is making potions with a few other elves to speed their healing. "You look well. How are you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess." I pause a moment before continuing, "I wanted to say thanks for... for everything. Aereweld, and everything."

"You are welcome," she bows her head. "Take all that you've learned from her to heart – it's a wonderful gift she's given you."

"Yeah," I agree and reach out to shake her hand in thanks, but she doesn't take my hand in turn. Dalish don't shake hands. I'm an idiot. I think I've offended her, and struggle to explain my actions even though I knew better. "It's just... Aereweld. I... I don't know how to explain this right." _Without completely embarrassing the shit out of myself_, I add silently in my head. I had known Aereweld for such a short period of time, but I know her better than I know most people. Lanaya helped set her free. It's almost too difficult to put into words just how important that is. "Ma serannas, Keeper. Emma sulahn'nehn. Enansal'nan." The shock of a human speaking elvish has passed on Lanaya, but the other elves around her look at me like I've sprouted wings. I try to ignore them the best I can when Lanaya speaks.

"Suledin, falon," she smiles and looks up to me from where she's sitting with a mortar and pestle in her hands. "Did Aereweld gift you the knowledge of Uthenera?" I nod. "Perhaps you would like to say it for her."

"I think I will," I smile a watery smile. "Good luck with... everything."

"Ma serannas. May the Creators guide you."

"Karie?" Sloane calls from behind me, and I turn to see him wearing dark, and hard looking leather armor. His leather cap has been replaced by an open faced helmet with hanging sides too. "We're all set to go."

I give Lanaya a quick wave goodbye, and Sloane thanks her again, before I turn to follow Sloane to the cart. Somehow the Dalish even found something for Sten to wear – it looks more like a barely held together padded vest, but at least he has more protection than he had. Everyone else has at least one thing new or repaired – Randall even has a collar now.

"Where are we going next lady seer?" Alistair asks while he puts an overstuffed pack into the cart.

"She's not really a seer," Sloane rolls his eyes. Everyone rolls their eyes at Alistair it looks like. "I thought I'd explained that to you all."

"She still knows how to end the Blight," the other Warden points out – literally with his finger wagging at Sloane. "Knowing the future still makes her a seer in my book."

"But she's not a mage," Sloane groans. "We have more important things to concern ourselves with then our companion here. Sorry, but it's true," he tugs at his packed belt. "We need to decide whether we'll go after one of the remaining treaties, or seek the men at Redcliffe."

"There's a civil war about to start in Orzammar because the king died, but I think he was murdered," I start listing off what I know and can remember as I'm trying to be helpful and distract myself all the same. "Blood mages are planning a coup at the Circle and 'll summon demons. And the village at Redcliffe is being overrun with walking skeletons. They're killing the villagers." I take a breath, "Arl Eamon is unconscious because he was poisoned by a blood mage hired by Loghain too." I scrunch my nose by the end of it. All the options suck.

"Arl Eamon was poisoned." Alistair looks pale. Oh... should I have just blurted all that like that?

"Why should we concern ourselves over one irrelevant nobleman when the Chantry's precious Circle is threatened? That sounds almost too good to be true, I dare say," Morrigan smiles a cruel looking smile. "I for one vote that we seek the treaty at the Circle next."

"How could you say such a thing?" Alistair quickly turns red in anger while facing Morrigan, "You don't know the Arl! He's a good man!"

"Calm down – all of you shems!" Sloane shouts. "You all made me leader, so let me think!" He runs a hand over his face and takes a deep breath while he visibly calms himself down._ He is a very leader-y person_, I think to myself. It's impressive how's he's adapted to this role given how he lived before. "If there are villagers dying at Redcliffe right now, then I think we should go there – quickly – and save as many people as we can."

"They are," I nod. "When we get there, they'll already be at their last leg."

"Why didn't you say something sooner then?!" Alistair growls at me... and I'd be lying if I didn't say it wasn't scary. His face is red and he looks so, so upset. He's pretty big too. Like quarterback sized. Have I mentioned how much I really don't like it when someone yells at me like this? It's even worse when it's a tall person doing the angry yelling.

I cower a little when I reply but hold my ground all the same, "I – the Dalish were dying too. Everyone's dying here. We can't – there's a Blight..."

"It's not her fault they're in danger," Sloane raps Alistair on the shoulder as if to physically keep him in check. "She's right though – everyone is dying. And we can't save everyone, but we can try to save as many as we can." He glares a little at Alistair until he looks away ashamed, and then looks to the rest of us. "Off to Redcliffe then."

* * *

_A/N: Soooo sorry this chapter is a day late! I had to completely re-write the beginning because I didn't like it -and- I've digitally painted Aereweld! Her portrait is up on my deviantart account, musicalrain0, and there's a link to my deviantart account on my profile here. You'll still get two more chapters later this week though readers! :D_

_Translations:_

_Ma serannas - 'my thanks'  
_

_Emma sulahn'nehn - 'I am singing with joy' or 'I am rejoicing'. A Dalish expression for extreme joyfulness.  
_

_Enansal'nan - 'Blessing vengeance'. A Dalish expression honoring the God of Vengeance and the All-Father, Elgar'nan.  
_

_Uthenera - the Dalish euolgy._

_Suledin - 'endure; strength to withstand loss'. In this context, a Dalish wish for luck or blessing for prosperity._

_Extra note: I've made up several of these expressions. i.e. they're not strictly canon._


	12. Chapter 12

"Where are we lethallan?" The voice rings out as clearly as a bell and reverberates through my skull causing me to wake up with a start and a gasp. I instantly bring a hand clasped to my chest as if to physically steam the rapid beating of my heart.

"Where are we?" The voice says again and I recognize it faintly as a demure version of Aereweld's soft tones.

I look around in confusion with a touch of fear and see the sky a muted grey, the clouds edged with eerie shades of color that like look like bruises with stars faintly glimmering behind their stretched edges.

"Where, lethallan?" The voice rings out again, and I struggle to my knees in the thickly muddy earth that smells rank of waste and stagnant water. The shapes in the distance are blurry as if I'm not wearing my glasses, and then I'm reminded that I haven't needed the things since waking in Thedas. I blink to clear the fog from my eyes just as a bit of moonlight winks out past the bruised clouds to alight a horrific scene before me. There's dead bodies littering the ground. I'm suddenly reminded of the stench around me as one I recognize covering an old friend of mine who had worked at the county morgue, and the smell of blood agars left out too long.

I can only stare in horrified silence as I take in the mangled and bifurcated bodies of elves and humans alike. There's limbs missing and shredded into the earth and weeds, faces leaking orange, red, and black viscous liquids from caved-in eyes and noses, greying organs still covered in lymph fluid and blood flayed from body cavities to lay inches from their wrecked bodies. I'm scared stock-still - I cannot move an inch.

"Here we are lethallan," the voice says again though much, much closer as if they're speaking right into my ear - I can nearly feel the ghostly breath feather across my cheek. "Do you recognize them lethallan?" It asks with an undefinable edge to those five words.

And sure enough - I do. There's Sloane, Alistair, Leliana, Morrigan, heck - even Sten. They're just heaps of bones and blood, but I can recognize them through the adrenaline fuelled-fear coursing through my veins and lighting the blood magic infused into my skin. And it's not just them there laying in this blackened field, but my sisters, parents, friends, and the rest of my family. They've all been slaughtered. Killed and thrown into a pile - and I don't know why.

"You have failed lethallan, just as I," the voice shrieks an unearthly sound and then I feel something cold, yet burning in my chest. When I pull my hand away from my heart it's covered in_ my_ blood and flesh - and I _scream_.

* * *

I wake up with my heart lodged in my throat and my cheeks dampened by tears – I had a nightmare. I know it was one. It was probably up there as one of the worst ones I've ever had though. And I think it was a mixture of one of Aereweld's memories and my own. Everyone I've ever known and cared about slaughtered on a field with more blood on their skin than should be possible. It was all so clear but hazy at the same time, as only dreams can be.

"Are you okay?" I see Sloane sitting on a log near the fire-pit where I had laid out the bedroll the Dalish had given me. He's on watch – it's still nighttime, but clearer than the nightmare's night I had just woken from. "You were thrashing about quite a bit before you woke. I would have woken you myself, but I didn't think it would've been wise to rouse a reaver – what with your life draining capabilities and all."

I shake my head at that, and then groan at the headache building in my skull, and I rub the sleep, and tears, from my eyes. "I think I'm just worried about everyone. I'm homesick, I think, and I don't even know how everyone is back home. I keep thinking about them."

"And you can't go home right now even if you wanted to." He replies in kind, "I miss my cousins too, but I suppose it's not the same – I can still see them sometime in the near future, hopefully."

"Soris and Shianni?" I ask with a raised brow and a relieved breath, and I'm glad for the distraction. That dream I had was too frightening, but I know it's a dream so I know it'll eventually pass.

"I'm still not used to you doing that," he smirks. "But yes, Soris and Shianni. Do you know what happened? How I became a Warden?" he readily changes the subject. I know that he knows nightmares all too well too.

I nod, "It can be a little different than what I know though. There were different ways that part of the story was told."

"Well, I think you can gather why I'd asked though," he brushes a hand through his hair. "I didn't exactly leave my cousins in the best place. I worry about them too."

"Did Soris get arrested?" Sloane doesn't seem like the kind of person that would've ratted him out, but I'm still curious none-the-less and completely focusing on his worries and not my own so I don't have to think about it.

"No – I solely took the blame for the crimes we'd committed so he would not suffer." He pauses before he continues, "Mind if I sit next to you while we discuss this? It's a bit... impersonal to be sitting at this distance talking about our families."

"Sure," I scoot over on my bedroll and stretch out my legs on the damp vegetation. The coldness prickles my skin but helps to further ground me in the here-and-now and not my thoughts. "Go ahead."

He gets up gingerly and sits on the far side of my bedroll a careful distance away. I wonder if he's actually scared of the weird blood magic reaver shit in my skin? He seems a little hunched over, and his face is pulled into an odd expression. "I left Soris behind with his betrothed. I'd imagine they'd marry soon," he says with a bit of longing in his tone.

I scrunch up my face – I don't remember what happens to them. I don't know if Soris ever marries that elven woman. I just remember the epilogue saying that he marries a human woman. "I think she stays with him... I don't really remember. I'm sorry..." Should I tell him about the slavers now that I'm thinking about it? It's not like he can do anything about it right now though. I'll warn him of some of it though. I don't know when the slavers get into the alienage anyways, and Sloane deserves to know some of what's happening to his home. At least all that I can remember clearly with certainty. "...Things get worse in the alienage. Lots of people get sick, and the nobles lock everyone up inside."

"A plague of some sort? Maker..." His ruddy brows furrow in obvious worry at his conclusions. "Those shems would corral everyone and watch them die – I can just imagine it," he spits with a palpable bitterness.

I lean towards him in a uneasy attempt to offer comfort in face of his anger, "Your family survives it though. Shianni, Soris and your father are all fine," I offer gently.

"Thank you, for letting me know," he smiles sadly. "Shianni deserves an easy life after all she's been through. I'd hate to think she'd be suffering while I'm gone."

"She's a strong girl," I smile reassuringly. "I just wish I knew if my sisters are okay. I mean, I know your cousins are okay, but... "

"I understand," he tilts his head knowingly. "Uncertainty plagues us all."

Sloane's words eat at me for the entire day. I'm far from certain on so much right now. Despite the things I have learned, and all that I've seen in these past few days, these past few moments, doubt still lingers. A fear of the unknown is almost suffocating. I worry about so much too, and those worries manifested themselves in my dreams. I hate myself for what I've done that to my family and friends back home, even if it was beyond my control.

"I'd wanted to apologize." I'm brought out of my troubling thoughts by a familiar voice, and blink up at Alistair in the bright afternoon's light. I'm walking beside the cart now that I have boots, and I think I might've accidentally wandered near him while I was lost in my head. "I was a right sodding arse yesterday, and I'm sorry about that – if I frightened you."

I blink some more while I'm unsure of what to say, and I think I've hesitated too long, because Alistair feels the need to continue, "I think I did scare you. I-I've felt bad about it. Everything must be so scary for you given what you've been through, and I... I'm just an insensitive arse apparently."

"You're just worried about Eamon, is all," I offer. "If I'd found out one of my uncles was in a coma, I would've freaked out too."

"'Uncle?' Wait..." he drawls in a suspicious tone, "You _know_, don't you?"

"Uh... shit," I bite my bottom lip nervously. "Is it really that big of a secret? Can't you just tell everybody?"

"Just tell everybody? Like it's that simple," he pinches the bridge of his nose with his gloved hand.

"It can be," I shrug. "I don't think anyone would treat you differently. What's it really matter anyway?"

"It can matter a whole lot to some people," he frowns harshly.

"I guess," now I'm frowning too at his frown-y face. "I don't think it'd matter with us though. Or maybe it's just me."

"It's probably just you," he smirks. "The lady reaver seer from a whole other world."

* * *

_A/N: I'm thinking about writing an entirely new chapter for the next one, and so the update might not be until the -very- end of the week. O.o Also, anyone have any ideas for a new cover image? I'm wanting to paint myself one instead of just leaving my lazy one that I used other people's bases to make up._


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: This chapter got away from me. O.o_

* * *

We're getting closer to Redcliffe, at least Alistair says we are. Everything looks the same dull tones of brown and green to me. I've never been this long out in fields and trees and such - I can't tell how much progress we've made, if any at all. I'm longing to see a familiar shopping complex or building. It's stupid that I miss that shit, but it's better than being distraught over something I _can't _change. (I can't go home.) It's been two weeks since we've left the Dalish though, and the different sights we've seen, though rare they are, are just as depressing as my reality. I've seen desolate farms burnt husks of the homes they once were, ashen piles of timber that Leliana tells me are burnt pyres, evidence of skirmishes stained into the ground in blackened blood, and bands of animals and people starved and wild-eyed. I've killed, God I have, and it keeps getting worse. The first time I killed a creature with my fucking sword was when another pack of Blighted wolves attacked us. The poor animals were mad and dying anyways, but I've still never killed a creature beyond bio lab dissections and failed attempts at making glowing fish in college. And that was before I'd taken an ethics class that completely changed my outlook on things - the sole reason for me becoming vegan and igniting my love of philosophy. I puked - I was covered in wolves' blood and rank pieces of bone, and my emotions surged along with my stomach's meager contents. It was all just instinct, the killing. I didn't even consciously register what I was doing until it was done and I was standing there with the beasts' still-warm blood coating my armor and fur and bits of tissue and brain matter stuck to my blade. This blood magic, and the blood rage associated with it really messes me up.

I was quiet, mad at myself and the world as a whole, for several days after - until we encountered a troupe of desperate bandits. Will I ever be clean? Will the images of those men's splayed open necks, blood-drenched gutted bodies, and ashen terrified faces at my own hands ever leave my mind's eye? It was so easy to do it too - easier than it should've been to take a life. Aereweld apparently taught me well. I'm an efficient warrior - Morrigan even told me so. Should I be proud of that? Should I be glad that people died because I had no choice? Those men didn't give us any options. I know well enough that they would've raped some of us, killed the rest, and gladly taken our belongings in the hopes of just surviving a day more in this fucked up world. That doesn't make me feel any better about it though. The only thing I'm the tiniest bit thankful for is that the blood rage left me unfeeling to it all until afterwards with me standing there stock-still staring in horrified shock at the massacre we'd created. I hate to think about just how dead I would've been if I had hesitated in drawing my sword. Those blood mages created a perfect little mindless killer, didn't they? Fuck 'em to hell and back. I hope the Beyond in this world is enough to let them suffer for every single damned life they've ever caused pain to, including my own and any lives that've been hurt because of me - whether in the creation of these abilities or after.

The things that I've experienced, the atrocities I've been witness to and participated in, left me unbalanced and hurt in a suffering of my own guilt and increasing ire to my situation. I had woken to another nightmare today. These things keep getting worse. These nightmares actually happened and torture me with a reality I desperately wish wasn't real. Sloane sat with me and kept me company after I woke up gasping for breath and soaked to the bone in a cold sweat. Alistair had tried to wake me from the one I had the next night, like he does for Sloane for their darkspawn ones, and I had nearly killed him. Those bloody webs in my skin lit up his, and I was draining the life from his body before Randall tackled us and I stopped. I was so disgusted with myself that I had hid in the nearby trees and wept until the sun had risen and we were ready to set out again. I can't control myself. I can't control these damned markings. Alistair was weakened for an entire day after that, and that was after Leliana force-fed him our largest health potion. I guess me and him are now even in scaring the shit out of each other.

"Does any of this get any easier?" I whisper to Sloane while I'm staring unseeing at the flames in the fire-pit. It's the following night, the sky is just starting to turn purple and pink with the coming sunrise, and I was unable to even attempt to rest with all the thoughts bounding about in my head and making me sick to my stomach. I haven't even been able to eat - how can I when I'd almost killed a friend mindlessly just mere days after slaughtering hungry, desperate men and women without so much as a blink until after the battle was done?

"No," Sloane - an elf, my friend, savior, and commander answers without hesitation in a voice labored with a truth that he understands too well. "We do the things other people can't imagine doing so they won't have to. We make the sacrifices so our families and friends have a safe world to live in." He looks towards me and rests a comforting hand on my shoulder. In the flickering light of the fire I can see his hazel eyes are more gold than green, and they're so honest. "We can't loose ourselves in our efforts. We have to stay true to what we believe and what we fight for."

"The Blight has to end," I agree and close my eyes while trying to digest that and take it to heart. "This isn't even my world though," I breathe after a moment.

"It is now Karie," when he says my name I open my eyes to look at him. "Perhaps one day you'll make a home here and do all the things normal people do, and then you'll look back at your time here aiding the Grey Wardens and you won't regret it. You'll look at your lover's face, your child's, and you would be willing to do it all again in a heart's beat."

"Is that what you think?" I ask in a quiet voice laden with uncertainty.

"I know it to be true," he answers with certainty in those few words. "You and I aren't so different, and that's what I know of myself. I'd do anything to protect the people I love."

I look at my lap and then back up to him before speaking a little stronger now, "The only fights I'd ever been in back home were to help my friends, and I would just get them away from the people that jumped them and take them with me to run and hide."

He smiles fleetingly and reassures, "That's still brave, Karie. You did something. You did something to protect someone you loved. It's just... different now."

I huff a breath and counter, "It's more than just _different_."

"I know," he agrees with a small nod of his head. "There's greater risks, but there's even more at stake now than with any scuffle we've ever had before." He stands and offers me a hand, "On that note, let's get going to save the good people of Redcliffe. Shall we?"

* * *

It's not just as simple as Sloane said our last leg to Redcliffe would be. Randall had triggered a bear trap when he had followed alongside Leliana when she went out for a hunt the next evening for the omnivores' dinner. The poor dog's hind leg was nearly snapped in half, and after me and Morrigan set it and wrapped it, it became quickly clear that we needed more basic supplies for our injury kits - like clean linens and catgut for sutures - then we had, even with Bodahn's supplies. We had to stop somewhere to trade. We came across a farmhouse with smoke billowing not out of the windows and doors, but the chimney by noon and it was a miracle. With a combination of Sten's intimidating silhouette and Sloane and Leliana's quick smiles the man of the house, with a rusted sword in one hand, allowed us to barter and even buy a lunch with his family.

The place was barren of anything homely - no family portraits, paintings or trinkets on the walls or mantle as if they'd already sold anything of value - or got it stolen. The woman in the house, the sister-in-law of the man that Sloane and Bodahn were trading with, went to help Morrigan with Randall under her supervision. I just hope Morrigan's at least civil with her - the woman looks absolutely washed out and despondent, but the farmer has the supplies we need for the dog.

I'm standing awkwardly by the unlit fireplace unsure of what to do with myself when I spot a boy, probably around seven or eight, sitting on the packed-dirt floor with an old violin in his lap. He's just plucking at the strings with a frown deeply etched into his dirt-stained face. Curious and concerned at the same time, I squat near him and smile slightly before speaking, "Hi, I'm Karie. What's your name?"

He blinks up at me with large, sad green eyes, "Tracker," he mumbles.

I point at the poor excuse for a violin and ask, "Do you want help with that? I know how to play."

He looks down at it for a long moment before handing it over to me. I sit fully on the dirt-for-floor and start tuning the violin with the boy just sitting next to me and quietly looking at me and what I'm doing. "Do you know how to play?" I ask once the silence is just too unnaturally long when in a child's presence.

I see him shake his messy blond mop of hair before muttering, "I' was father's. He said I'd learn when I'm big."

I don't need an explanation on that little fact, and in turn say a quiet, "Oh."

A heartbeat more passes before the kid, Tracker, speaks up again, "You soun' funny." I look to him when he says this and he looks as embarrassed as any kid can be. I smile and he blurts, "An' you look funny."

A tiny laugh free of sadness escapes my throat - it's the first time I've laughed in who-knows-how-long. "I'm not from around here," I reply with a smile in my voice. "Have you been brave for your mom-mother and uncle?" He nods eagerly while he straightens his shoulders visibly, "Do you know those bad, ugly creatures called darkspawn in the woods?"

He nods again and says, "Fa-father said he saw some before 'e left for the Harte's. He said ta stay inside no matter what."

I frown a bit, "If things get too bad you and your family are gonna have to go north. It's safer up there - the darkspawn are coming from the south. Do you understand? The darkspawn are mean and can hurt you if you don't run away from them. It's safer in the north."

He nods eagerly again, "North."

I smile again and hand him back his father's violin. "If you have to leave - go north. And you be brave for your mommy and uncle and stay safe, okay?"

He nods again, "Thanks lady."

We leave this family after buying a lunch of boiled potatoes, pickled eggs (which I didn't eat), and something like hardtack we left towards Redcliffe - an estimated four days away with Randall healing nicely in the back of the cart with fresh sutures, medicinal oils and paste, and fresh bandages and splint on his leg. I only hope this family survives the Blight - I know I'll keep this kid, Tracker, in the back of my mind for him breaking through my melancholy spell and giving me a reason to smile and laugh. I'd nearly felt incapable of doing so.

* * *

Redcliffe looks picturesque in person. At least it does until we get to the village proper and see all the carnage. There's abandoned houses and stables with broken doors and gates, a giant pyre with unidentifiable bodies laying in it giving everything a fine coating of dust, and then there's sick and injured people huddled together near to the tired, sweat and bloodstained few with weapons. The whole place smells of ash, decay, and body odor. It looks worse than I had imagined – and with Aereweld's memories of battle-time, I had a lot to guess on before seeing this place in person.

Alistair had taken my advice and hesitantly told his birth history to our companions just before we reached the hills surrounding the village. He looked scared then, but now, seeing all this, he looks absolutely horrified. I'm sure he's seen bad things in his life until this point, but I don't think he was quite prepared to see his hometown in this state. Things go with Teagan just how I'd remembered them from the game, even his shock at seeing Alistair. Alistair's face lifts for just a moment in his uncle's presence, before Teagan tells us what needs to be done before nightfall. The air of desperation is more permeating here than it was ever portrayed to be in the game.

"Karie, do you know how this battle will go here tonight?" Sloane asks me over his shoulder while we're still standing around Teagan in the dusty, humid Chantry.

"The skeletons will come down the hill from the castle and from the lake," I hold my hands together to prevent any nervous twitching while I recount what I can remember. It was so long ago that I'd played it, but I think I remember this part well enough. "We can defeat them. It's even possible to do it without any deaths."

"Do you know how?" Sloane prompts and I nod. He then turns back to Bann Teagan with a confidence in his stance and his chin held high. "There you have it. We'll go prepare the men."

"How can she possibly know that, Commander?" Teagan asks Sloane while he's looking at me curiously.

"Karie here is a seer of sorts," Sloane explains while sending a quick wink my way. 'Seer of sorts,' I guess that it explains it well enough. "I'd take her word seriously," he adds.

"A seer?" The Bann quirks a brow while a small smile flits across his face, "The Maker has graced us with good fortune indeed."

* * *

_A/N: New cover is up! Inspired by Apollo Wings' suggestion. :D There's a direct link to a non-cropped larger version of the cover on my profile, along with a direct link to Aerweld's portrait. And thanks for reading readers! :)  
_


	14. Chapter 14

I was wrong. I was so incredibly wrong that it _hurts_ me sharper than any blade to see what's the result of my stupid certainty. Did I think I'd had omnipotent abilities granted by a modicum of omniscient knowledge that I possess? Well, I don't. I'm just a dumbass that thought everything would be as simple as it would be in the game. You can't save everyone. You just can't. It's impossible. We'd lit the oil on fire, or at least Morrigan did from her position on the hill with Sloane, Sten, and Randall. We'd broken off in two groups to bolster the strengths of the villager's numbers, even after doing those stupid little tasks the men had us do, and in the game increased our chances of playing this part perfectly. Perfect - is there even a sensible application of that word? There isn't, and people are dying amongst horrible screams and lances of blood that will stay with me always because I was foolish to believe in that word's truth. Perfect, it's a load of crap.

The damned walking skeletons we're fighting are attacking with a ferocity I've only ever seen before in zombie movies. The absolute and consuming horror of having to fight these things while ensuring that our skin is still attached to our bones is impossible to imagine etched into a man's face until you see it in person. It's chaos. Most of these men and women fighting are green - greener than I am with the knowledge gifted to me by an ancient elf, who I swear upon Elgar'nan himself I'll name my firstborn after if I just make it out of this alive. Blighted wolves and half-starved bandits have nothing on demonic skeletons powered by an ill spirit of desire granting them movement through a tear in the fabric of the Beyond the spirit's holding open with the tendrils of a deal it'd brokered with a mage-blooded child as the vice. I will _gladly _see to that thing's end, again, if I survive this damned night!

The skeletons' rusted weapons are fused to their very hands and arms, and instead of blood they leak gases from their decomposing flesh and bones. They keep attacking you even when you cut them off at the legs. Some still have their own flesh hanging off in loose, slimy chunks from weapons and fight with both their eyes gone and their sight absent. They can sense us through the powers granted to them by the spirit and the curse giving them movement to do the spirit's bidding. Both my aura of pain and my life draining abilities are utterly useless. They have no working nerves with which to feel pain, and have no life source sustaining them and there for me to drain. I'm relying on a mixture of my own adrenaline-fueled fear, unable to fully be consumed by the blood magic inserted into my flesh due to the inability to properly utilize its well of power, but able to feed off of the inherent blind anger gifted to any reaver regardless of how they'd obtained the abilities. The skeletons are nearly indomitable. Every ally that falls as a result of my stupidity is resurrected as an enemy to attack those that still possess their lives. We're loosing _many _people. Their life-ending screams rend through the air on a terrible, unnatural wind as the spirit feeds off of their life sources in their defeat. The skeletons are mindless, and they will not stop.

It's hours of mindlessness and too many injuries to count before I can see just the smallest pink and yellow wisping tendrils of breaking sunrise peak over the horizon, and with it a dwindling number of enemies. I had discovered by then that the freshly dead bodies still possessed residual life-giving energies in them that I could take to fuel my own with my own cursed abilities granted by dark magic. It was fucked up, but I survived. I was whole enough to ensure that none in my party perished, and was able to attempt to properly see after the men and women in my general area and entrusted into my care by Sloane. In this world the curse of blood magic is a gift. It is for me at least. It's dangerous, and it hurts every time it awakens, but it's kept me alive and I'm incredibly thankful for just that small benefit.

By the time the skeleton's numbers lessened so we had a chance of eradicating them, at least here this night, I had saved my last life of the starting morning. There was a man shaking with the last dregs of adrenaline, barely able to lift his sword, only to have a crazed skeleton sneak on him while he was removing his helmet and wiping the sweat off of his face. The skeleton bit off the man's ear before I could even attempt to wrestle it off of him, and together me and the man managed to crush the thing's skull until the creature was no longer moving. Even whole heads broken off at the neck would still try to bite at you until you broke through the skull.

The soft light of the rising sun brings with it an end to the near-endless sea of undead vying for our lives. It's a fucking miracle. I feel the sticky sting of un-healed injuries burning with sweat beneath my armor and the weight of my sword, despite the runes reducing its weight and hindrances to speed, heavy in my hand when I collapse to the ground on my weakened knees in complete relief for the battle's end. We'd fought the entire night - hours upon hours of skeletons attacking and me relying near-solely on Aereweld's knowledge to keep my head attached to my shoulders. And hours of the sight of men and women's deaths because of my ignorance and assurances as a _seer_ that all would be well. I'm a dumbass, and I hate myself for it. These people are _real _and I'm _really _here and I shouldn't be so stupid as to put their very _lives _at risk. Maybe I am crazy.

"Milady seer," Alistair smiles weakly and collapses onto his knees beside me. The guy's fitter than half the men and women here, and he looks completely worn. "I think you got the last one."

Instead of weeping for joy, I weep in grief - so many people lost their lives tonight. Maybe they would've been better without me here? "I was wrong Alistair," I whisper brokenly into his chestplate with a bowed head heavy with the lives I've taken with my own hands nights before and those I've taken with my ignorance. The memory of Tracker and his innocence isn't even enough to lessen the weight those lives place on me.

"What do you mean you were wrong? We survived," he replies with a hesitant hand on my back.

"I said everyone would live, and they didn't," I admit.

After a pause long enough for me to start to feel the fatigue seeping into my bones from the fight and my unnatural sitting position, I hear Alistair reply, "You told people what they needed to hear. You gave them faith like we did with the Chantry's amulets."

I look up at him slightly surprised by the maturity of his words, though they're wrong. "No. They died because I was stupid enough to think they wouldn't."

"Get up you lazy Blighters!" Sloane says too loud and too cheerily next to us and interrupts our conversation. "There's blankets in the Chantry we can pass out on!"

In my exhaustion, both mentally and physically, I'm weak to the elf as he pulls me along and into the Chantry. Despite the state of things I promptly pass out on a thread-bare poor excuse for a blanket wracked with my own guilt and pain at seeing the results of my ignorance first-hand.

Everything is just mechanical when I wake up some odd hours later and only thinking on the lessons Aereweld had taught me. Poor weapon maintenance was a surefire way to see to your own demise when your very livelihood relied so heavily on it. I manage to coax Randall into letting me use him as a back rest while I set myself to cleaning my sword and armor. I have the need for comfort, and I'll take it even from Sloane's dog.

"May I join you milady?" I hear an unfamiliar voice say to me, and I turn my head to blink up at... Teagan. Why would he want to chat with me? To blame me for his people's deaths? Where's Alistair? Why won't he speak to him or Sloane?

"I-I guess," I stutter unsure of myself.

He sits heavily near me on the floor, and sets the sword he carries carefully across his lap, rag in hand, before he turns to speak to me next, "I had wanted to thank you for all your aid. Without you and the Wardens, I fear we would not have survived the night." He says this kindheartedly with a small, charming smile on his face making him almost look innocent and younger than he is. I know why some fangirls called him the 'Bannhammer' now. I will not say that aloud – ever.

I feel a blush creep up on my cheeks at my thoughts, and only hope that the blood magic lines in my skin will cover it well. "I-I'm glad we'd helped," I answer unsure of what to say. Maybe it's true they wouldn't have all survived if we hadn't been here. "And that you think we made a difference."

"Why your lot did," he assures. "You all convinced our blacksmith to open shop, and inspired the men to defend their homes with a fervency that they've not had for some time in our battles. We won the battle last night, I assure you." He smiles kindly at me, and with his words I feel some of the guilt fade away from my tired muscles. "Are you a Grey Warden as well?" he asks me conversationally while setting to work on moving the rag against his sword.

"No," I answer shortly and try to reign in my natural awkwardness and the self-doubt I've felt since the start of the battle. I set myself on a conversation with a complete stranger, and not my troubling thoughts, before continuing after a moment. "Sloane, ah, recruited me to help," I explain vaguely.

"And so you are," he smiles again. "Are you close with Alistair? If you don't mind my prying, milady."

I pinch my lips to the side in thought a moment. "Yeah. I... guess I am." I pause a bit before elaborating, "I know you're his kinda-sorta uncle, if that's what you're curious about."

"You know of his parentage?" Both the Bann's brows are raised and he's looking at me in noticeable surprise.

"Yep, I've known for awhile."

His hands still on his sword, "If you don't mind my asking, does that not affect your decision?"

I blink in complete confusion, and blurt, "What?" unintelligently.

"To be involved with him romantically," he clarifies patiently.

"What? No, I'm-" My voice turns shrill. Why would Teagan ever think that? I spend no more time with Alistair than with anyone else. "I'm just the guy's friend!" I feel my face warm in another embarrassed flush, "I don't even like Alistair like that," I explain in a more normal-toned voice.

"Every bloke wants to wake up and hear a woman shriek that," I hear Alistair groan, and I turn my head to see him wiping at his face sleepily. My face still burns beneath the lines embedded there.

I think I'm very red and very embarrassed right now. "Oh my God," I mumble quickly. "You're like the little brother I've never had."

"Little brother?" Alistair repeats disbelievingly.

Damn Teagan for getting me so embarrassed over something so nonsensical. "You're very much brother material."

"She prefers elves," Sloane smugly remarks while he plops down by his mabari's face to scratch him between the ears. "Isn't that right, my dear?"

I push him on the shoulder. He doesn't budge. I have no strength without use of the blood magic. "I told you I didn't mean it like that!" I huff. "You all are picking on me," I grumble. "I hate you all."

"I don't believe that for a moment," Sloane's smile is even more smug. "You love each of us dearly." I push him again. Fucker's right, but he doesn't have to be an ass about it.

* * *

_A/N: Some seriousness and a little bit of humor at the end! :P Sorry this chapter took so long to get out, but I'm going to have to re-write several of the chapters around this part in the story because I don't like the quality of the originals. So I'm sorry if the last few chapters were lacking, but they should all be better from here on out!  
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	15. Chapter 15

The camaraderie I'd felt amongst Teagan, Alistair, and Sloane keep me feeling lighthearted when we all pitched in to help once everyone was awake and functional enough to do more than walk in a stupor. I was partnered up with Morrigan with the healing. I had the remnants of a small smile on my face even when the witch had me help her set a dislocated shoulder. I'd felt the smile grow with the patient when he'd recounted his tale even after we'd splinted his ankle too. It was strange to think of, but I felt just a bit better after being with the injured for a time. They might've been dead if Sloane hadn't gotten us here so quickly. Who's to say that if we'd been later we'd have less villagers to work with, and we would've lost more in the ensuing battle due to being even more outnumbered? I was wrong to think we could save everyone, but we did save some. Perhaps that's all I should expect - here and elsewhere. Sloane seems set on keeping me around, and maybe I should try to adopt his attitude in regards to people's lives - we can't save everyone but we'll try out damnedest. I'll try to believe that, but it's difficult to really put my heart into that sentiment while I walk through the village square and see the dried pools of blood on the dirt and grasses from allies who've lost their lives. I was an idiot to lead them to believe they'd all survive. If their surviving relatives and loved ones blame me for their demise, I won't hold it against them.

Teagan lead us to the windmill for secrecy's sake to plan for entering the castle. I was too busy looking out from the edge of the hill down at the village's square, having been drawn to the damage and destruction and in turn weighing my failures, to really give Teagan my full attention. When Isolde came down the path with a deeply depressed and frightened expression, wearing nothing more than a pair of silk slippers and a disheveled dress, I tried to warn the Bann against going with her. I told him she was hiding something, Sloane too urged him to stay as well, but he still left with his sister-in-law to the castle... and the spirit of desire hiding in Connor's body. It was a chilling thought that a child harbored such a thing. The tear in the Veil gives everything a cold, unnatural feel and it's seeping into my bones from the blood magic lines in my skin and awakening the predator-prey response inherent in every being. We're the prey here to this ill spirit, I must not forget that.

Randall is still recovering, only haven broken his leg days before this battle and even with some magical healing and potent herbs to speed his healing to unnatural states he is still weakened, and so Sloane ordered Sten to watch after his mabari and wait outside the gates until we could grant them entrance on the other side. Sloane didn't want to risk any unnecessary injury, and decided that two rogues, two warriors, and a mage equated a balanced enough group for a successful infiltration. That's how they think of people here - warriors, rogues, mages. I'm a warrior now, aren't I? That thought has never really meant something tangible until now. Now I'm fighting to save others, and not just myself. The things done to me shaped me into this, and I'm going to use it. I'm going to listen to Sloane. I'm going to try to follow his direction, after all, he's _the Warden_ here and he has more chance of success than any of us.

There's a handful of skeletons in the dungeons, but once Morrigan shapes herself into a giant spider and immobilizes them for us, they're easy pickings. I don't strike them though, instead I'm drawn to the area I know Jowan to be at. I find him in a small cell at the end of the hall wearing nothing but torn trousers and in a state of filth that's repulsive - there's blood and dirt even visible in his overgrown facial hair in the dim lighting. He scurries to his knees when he sees me and stares at me with piercing eyes until he shuffles forward to reach a mud-crusted hand through the bars of his cell.

"Help me! Please! I don't belong here!" he begs.

"You're Jowan," and it's almost as much of a statement as it is a question.

"Y-you know me?" He stutters and looks me over once more. "You don't look like one of the guards... and you... you feel different."

What the hell does he mean by that? "I know of you," I explain after staring at him in silence maybe a moment too long while I try to figure him out. "I know what you did." I accuse him with a half-hearted glare. I'd played a Circle mage before in the game - I know what he did both in the Circle and in the castle.

"You mean with the Arl?" He licks his dry, cracked lips and moves closer to the cell's bars, "I didn't summon the demon! You must believe me!"

"Karie? What's going on? Who is this?" Sloane asks me from where he's come up to stand beside me.

I look over towards Sloane with a slight nervous twitch of my hands for what I'm about to explain. "Jowan was a Circle mage before he used blood magic to try and escape with his girlfriend. I don't know how long it was, but eventually Loghain hired him to poison Eamon. Jowan's here because Isolde hired him to teach Connor how to hide his magic."

"He's a blood mage?" Alistair seethes, and I turn my head to see him glaring at the cell. "But... wait. You said Connor's a mage? How can that be?" He asks with more befuddlement than anger.

"How is it that you know all that?" I hear Jowan whisper, but I choose to keep my attention focused on Alistair.

"Connor's... a late bloomer," I turn towards Alistair to better speak with him. "Isolde doesn't want to send him to the Circle. She thought he could hide it, but... but Connor did all this. When his dad got sick from Jowan, Connor was scared and... and I don't think he knows the difference between good and bad spirits."

"I did not think the well of power possessing a hold over this place was brokered by this fool," Morrigan comments with a gesture in Jowan's direction to my back. "He does not have the characteristics of one possessed." I know from Aereweld that mages can sense disturbances in the Beyond, and that the blood magic in my skin allows me to feel some of it too - more than a non-mage, and as much as a Templar, I think.

"Wait..." Alistair takes a step forward with his head slightly tilted between me and Morrigan. "Are you saying Connor made a deal with a demon?"

"A spirit of desire," I nod my head. "The spirit chose to bond with him instead of possess him all the way. He's not an abomination."

All of a sudden feel something wet and warm grab a hold of the nape of my neck. It startles me, and I try to pull away only to have the blood magic embedded into my skin awaken with a sharp lance of pain and immobilize me momentarily. The next thing I know I have Leliana's arms around my shoulders, and her whispering something in French to the top of my head. When my vision focuses, I see one of Sloane's daggers pinning one of Jowan's hands to the packed dirt floor, and Alistair's sword at Jowan's throat with a white smoke around the two. Did he just smite him? Is that what I'm seeing?

"What happened?" I ask to no one in particular in a raspy voice.

"He tired to harm you, mon ami," Leliana explains.

"That's how you know!" Jowan shouts with a crazed look about him. "The blood magic! It has to be! How else would you know? You're not a mage!"

"Shut it blood mage! Don't you move," Alistair growls and visibly presses his sword firmer on Jowan's throat.

"Wait! No, no!" Jowan begs and lifts his uninjured hand pleadingly. "I didn't do it! I swear I didn't do it! Please! I didn't mean it!"

"Let us not postpone the killing of this pathetic excuse of a mage any longer," Morrigan sighs. "I bore of him and his ceaseless begging."

"No, I say we leave him here as a snack for the demon," Sloane stands and sheathes his blade after wiping it of Jowan's blood on his leg. "We know all we need to," he looks briefly over to me and I wonder what he sees before he looks back towards Jowan with Alistair still towering over him. "We don't need any undue blood on our hands."

"I say we have enough of a reason," Alistair grumbles, but also sheathes his blade with a hateful glare still directed at the guy bent over on the dirty floor of his cell.

Sloane shakes his head, "We need to get a move on. There's a child playing with a demon, and that's most certainly not good."

* * *

_A/N: Originally this chapter covered more of the story, but since I've re-written it I've decided to break it up into two! :) Part two will be up next update!  
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	16. Chapter 16

I'm watching Jowan bleed. Well, he's watching himself bleed too if the subtle tilt to his head is any indication behind his knotted, greasy locks that are obscuring his expression from my view. He's letting the dark blood pool in his hand before it splatters to the filthy dungeon floor in fat drops, and I can't help but to wonder why he's doing this. Alistair just smote him, and can't blood mages use their own blood to replenish their mana pools even after a smiting? I don't know for certain, even with Aereweld's memories always in the back of my head. Aereweld studied life preservation and the intricacies of the Beyond, and not the power gained from a life's source. She worked to understand life and its facets, and not use it for one's own power. She was not a blood mage, but she had a literary understanding of it. There were no Templars in her time though. I'm just not sure what's going on in Jowan's head to keep him from trying to escape. He just lashed out at me, didn't he? And he had to have escaped more than just one Templar to get to this point anyway.

But Leliana's urging me along at Sloane's encouragement, and I subconsciously touch the back of my neck where Jowan had held it just minutes ago while we start to walk the dank halls to emerge from the dungeons. The blood lines there still hurt and ache. I don't know what he did. I was just babbling, and then... I don't know. I take one last fleeting glance at Jowan's crumpled form to see him carefully curl his still bleeding hand to his chest and then back away from the cell's rusty iron bars and completely from my sight.

Soon such thoughts and worries are pushed aside when the undead emerge from abandoned rooms and from behind overturned furniture to attack us in mass. There's nothing more to our journey than cutting, running, and fighting with all reserves of strength we may have. I feel like an entirely different person when the blood rage and the heat of the battle overcomes me. I'm not myself in those moments - I'm a shadow of an ancient Dalish mage's memories intermixed with some blood mages' experiment. Not _me _at all. How can I still be myself and yet feel pleased at the sight of desiccated corpses?

We find the blacksmith's daughter soon after. I knew she was hiding in a closet, but I just couldn't remember _which _closet until we hear her whimpers after a particularly gruesome fight that didn't leave a single one of us unscathed. I can't heal myself with the undead very well. I'm starting to think one of my wrists is fractured, and that I might have a few cracked ribs. It hurts even through the receding high of adrenaline. Despite this though, I volunteer to go with Leliana and escort the girl back to the secret passage in the dungeons. At least one of us has to go with her, and it'd be better if there were two. I'm sure Leliana is more than capable given her history, but my damned conscious got in the way at the sight of the teenager clinging to Leliana's leathers as if they were physical insurances to her own complete safety. Leliana will have her hands full with just her alone, let alone hordes of walking skeletons hiding in every corner of this place. There's no way we could've actually killed them all on our way here. There's just too many. Sloane needs the more capable fighters with him anyway, and so I'm the first to volunteer to go with them. I'll be the heavy hitter and Leliana will be the security. I'm okay with that.

"Should we double back the same way?" I ask Leliana with my hand already fisted around the hilt of my sword, still in its scabbard. I'm anxious to have this all done with already. I'd be happy not to see another walking skeleton ever again.

"We can try for now," the redhead nods. "Though the sounds of battle may not have been a deterrent with these creatures. It may have enticed them to seek us out. We should use caution mon ami."

"Can't we just wait until they leave?" The girl whimpers from beside Leliana with one of the most fearful expressions I've seen on a person. Her eyes are wide and brimmed with tears framed in a sickly pale face and sweat streaked hair.

"They won't just go," I say. "Not yet. We need to get you outta here."

We walk through the destroyed halls and rooms in a line while we retrace our steps. I'm in front following the trail of re-killed skeletons with Velena behind me and then Leliana in the back with her bow in her hands - ready to pull the string back and loose an arrow at a moment's notice. I have my hand on my sword, and the blood magic webs in my skin itch with anticipation. We only find a couple living corpses shuffling and groaning in doorways and corners though. Leliana kills these silently and with an ease that makes her a true marksman. She kills them before the blacksmith's daughter's upset cries and whimpers can give us away. I feel utterly useless by the time we reach the heavy double wooden doors leading down to the dungeons. But then the creak of the rusted iron hinges while we muscle the door open gives us away. A half a dozen or so corpses rush out of the now opened door and from an adjacent room off the side of the hall. Alarm bells go off in my head at the sight of them all - some are still mostly whole with butcher's knives and improvised weapons in their decaying hands. One's an elven child with a fireplace poker in her hands and deadened, white eyes. I think I'm going to vomit.

Velena screams an ear-piercing scream and dashes behind the now opened door to hide. I feel the burn of the blood magic igniting my reserves of power with a sharp, now familiar, lance of pain, and soon it's all a senseless blur of sword-in-bone and quick moments that I had no idea I was capable of until fighting became a necessary part of my daily routine. I get bashed into the side of my helm by a heavy skillet that momentarily stops the filter of information from my subconscious and the _need _to keep fighting that's seeping into me from my very skin. I take a mace to the shoulder for my disorientation, and the sticky hot blood of my own that's now freely mixing with the now open blood magic lines _burns me_. That's the only word I have for it, and next I know I have the mace-wielding corpse's rancid blood and decomposing innards coating my hands and face from my sword. It takes my boot and several stomps for the corpse to stop moving altogether even though it was flayed open. Then another skeleton tackles me from behind and launches me over my most recent kill. I smack my chin into the stone of the floor and wrestle to get my sword back into my hands through my renewed dizziness. There's pain building from behind my eyes as my previous injuries creak under the weight of the skeleton on my back as it tries futilely to find an opening in my armor for which it to get to my flesh. I feel my skin shredding beneath its nails when it finds purchase in the exposed and vulnerable side of my neck, and then it goes suddenly still with me trapped beneath and without a single sound to signify why.

It's dead, I gather that much, and I swallow roughly to try and calm my racing heart, before I push up with my hands, more weight on one than the other, to get the skeleton off of me. The white fletching of one of Leliana's arrows lodged into the back of its skull signifies that she'd killed it for me before it could put an end to me itself. If Leliana didn't judge the distance right, and the strength needed to just pierce the thing's head, I could've been hurt via friendly fire. I'm so thankful she knows what she's doing. She's crouched near the door though, and I can still hear the girl alive and crying behind it.

"Thanks," I mumble awkwardly and stumble over towards the two - the girl's re-adhered herself to Leliana's side in the time it takes me to get there. I'm still bleeding, but it's a dull pain. I'll find a freshly skilled corpse soon enough to heal myself with, I'm sure. That's still a disturbing thought.

"Maker! You saved me!" The girl cries out and distracts me from my own concerns when she begins wailing anew. She's clinging to Leliana and crying into her leathers, and Leliana is trying to hush her.

We start up walking again once Velena's able to get her feet under her, and she's quiet enough that she won't give us away too much. She's upset, understandably so, and I don't begrudge her for acting the way she is. I was no better when I had similarly suddenly found myself in danger and was without a clue for what to do.

The moldy and stale musk of the dungeons hits us hard the further down we go through the winding, narrow halls and steep stair cases, but no more corpses pop out of hidden shadows. There's few side rooms and halls off of this route, and we had cleared everything out well enough it seems. We're back in the last hall of the furthest, filthiest cells before the secret entrance before we come across just two corpses that hardly give us any trouble - they were little more than animated bones with daggers. I glance at Jowan's cell for the briefest of moments before we run past on the last bit to get the girl to safety.

"Here! This is the exit," Leliana breathes relieved, before I help her to pry the door built into the wall open.

"I can't go in there alone," the girl squeaks.

"You can and you shall," Leliana smiles with a gentle pull on the girl's hand to get her closer to the door. "We cannot come with you, but you will not be alone whilst following this path. Allow the Maker to shelter you and protect you in these last few moments to your freedom. You will be safe under His care." Velena whimpers, but nods sadly and complies. She gives Leliana a quick hug before she leaves the dungeons completely. She seemed to be quite attached to her rather quickly.

We both take a moment to catch our breaths before we lock up the secret door again, and start up on traveling the same path now for the third time. We're just even more injured and tired now. Hopefully there's less corpses though. There's that. Sloane, Alistair, and Morrigan should have found the courtyard by now, I think. We need to hurry if we wanna catch up before they reach Connor.

"Wait," I put a hand on Leliana's elbow to stop her from walking further as we approach Jowan's cell again. "Can you pick that lock?" I ask and point towards the wrought iron mechanism holding the cell's door closed.

"Yes, of course," Leliana raises one delicate brow. "But why should I? He is a blood mage, non?"

"Think of it as a favor," I reply quickly, "I'd totally owe you one. What ever you want. Promise."

"Why do you want him released? He harmed you," she frowns.

"I know that, but he can help us," I shift my weight in a tell-tale way to show I'm just the slightest bit unsure. He had his stupid moments in the game, but he was nothing if not helpful. "Please?"

Leliana squints her eyes in scrutiny and possibly disbelief for a long moment. "I will do this for you," she finally agrees, but I hear the unsaid 'but you'll owe me' loud and clear.

All I can see of Jowan is his steely eyes in the dark shadow cast in the back of his cell while Leliana sets to work on the lock. It takes her less than a minute of working the lock before the loud and sharp _click _of the lock sliding free sounds out through the quiet of the place. I push the door open then and step cautiously in. This is probably a bad idea, on second thought. The blood magic lines in my skin are restless in his presence.

"Have you decided to kill me?" Jowan asks in a rough, broken whisper and it strikes me that this man is _afraid _of me, and that just isn't right. No one's frightened of me, well, unless you're a darkspawn or a demon imbued skeleton, then maybe you should be.

"No, no," I shake my head and crouch in front of him with my empty hands outstretched. "I wanna set you free, only if you promise to help us... and not hurt me again. Ever," I add as an afterthought. "Desire's stronger than I thought. Have you seen how many bodies the spirit has resurrected? Can't you feel how torn the Veil's fabric is?"

"Yes, but..." He blinks with wide eyes and then asks, again, in a hushed voice, "_How do you know this?_"

"It's a long story and has somethin' to do with three blood mages and a Dalish Arcane Warrior." I shake my head, "You remember those two men from earlier that I was with? They're Grey Wardens and we're fighting the Blight. This mess doesn't mean anythin' compared to that. Do you understand? We need to get Redcliffe settled before we can move on. There's a whole horde of darkspawn out there." Wow. I guess Sloane really has influenced my way of thinking about this situation with all his talk in recent days.

"And you want _my _help?" He leans forward just slightly with his question.

"Yes, please." I look down to my gloved hands, and after a brief moment's hesitation I remove one of my gloves and reach out to his wounded hand in a gesture of kindness. It looks like Sloane had cut straight through. When the blood magic lines in my skin make contact with just a bit of his blood though it stings, but now I understand. "I get it. The lines in my skin react to blood magic. You were already bleeding earlier when you touched me." Like the three blood mages were bleeding when they had done whatever it was they were doing, and it hurt. A lot. I look up to Jowan then and keep eye contact when I offer a bit of insight, "I was made into a reaver by a cult of blood mages. I'm not afraid of you, and I want your help."

He swallows harshly and after two times of trying to speak, he finally does. "I will need to heal myself first."

"Use my blood," I offer without hesitation. He looks more than wary, so I clarify, "I'm used to it." The blood mages that brought me here did much worse than using a little of my own blood for their needs after all.

He reaches his cold, dampened hand slowly to the open scratches on the side of my neck, and then everything blankets out in a white haze of pain and aching that lasts for a mere handful of seconds before it suddenly stops with an odd sense of loss. I open my eyes blearily to see a fire that was not present in Jowan's gaze now blazing through the stormy grey of his eyes. He looks immensely better, still filthy, but there's an aura of power and strength about him now. I can see why he'd survived as long as he has as a blood mage with this confident set to his shoulders and self-assurance in his very being.

"I will help you now. You have my word." He wipes the blood off his hand and onto the fabric of his trousers. "Now may I know your name?" His voice sounds different too, clearer and more refined even. He must've been in a bad state before, and for some reason wasn't using his abilities to his advantage.

"I'm Karie." I move to slowly stand and wobble ever so slightly on my feet. I feel drained, and I ache and am still very much injured from earlier, but I can still carry on with the residual strength afforded to me by the blood magic in my skin. "C'mon. We have to get to the others. The ill spirit is gonna attack them with its thralls... And I need to find something to kill. Like right now. I need to heal myself."

"I am sure we will find a corpse for your use," Leliana says from behind me and reminds me of her presence. "On the way, of course. We must make haste. I worry for our Warden friends."

"The Wardens who had wanted to either kill me or leave me for dead?" Jowan laughs self-depreciatingly and too stands. I wonder if we can find his things too? He could do with some robes and a staff. "This ought to be interesting."

* * *

_A/N: I had to re-write this entire chapter three times because I couldn't seem to get it right, lol. XD And it's still ridiculously long even after I broke it up a bit. :/ Next update this weekend!  
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	17. Chapter 17

I think I'm a bad reaver. Aren't reavers supposed to feel stronger or more revitalized or some shit with the more injuries they sustain? Then how come I feel like complete and utter crap? It hurts with every breath I take, I'm dizzy, and it's more difficult then it should be to put one foot in front of the other and walk in a straight line. It's because of these damned demon-spawn skeletons that are resistant to my abilities, and the fact that I let Jowan use blood magic on me, isn't it? Well, shit. I finally figure out how to handle myself, and the situation prevents me from being of any use - again. I hate this feeling of being useless, a liability. I try to help, really I do, but I seem to keep getting in over my head.

"You don't look well." I blink owlishly at the softly spoken words in an attempt to clear my head, and look up despite the haze clouding my senses to see Jowan looking at me with a concerned furrow to his dark brow. This coming from the guy that was just sitting in a rat shit strewn dungeon cell for who-know-how-long after being tortured enough to make him paranoid and gave him those gruesome looking brands and linear striking scars I recognize as whip marks on his sides, shoulders, and arms. Probably his back too, but I can't see that with him standing all statuesque next to me, and with that look on his face I don't think I want to ogle his injuries just so I can see how the blood magic healed him but left the scars...

Wait. I didn't respond, did I? What'd he ask again? "Huh?" I reply while I'm trying to figure out what that tattoo there on his bicep is...

"You do not appear to be in the best of health," he replies with a measure of patience and a deeper furrow of his brow. His tone's a bit condescending, isn't it?

"No shit Sherlock," I snap and inwardly cringe at myself when I hear how that must sound. Damned bitchy-

"Am I supposed to know what that means?" He sighs. "Now you're loosing lucidity. I shouldn't have used your blood. A moment of weakness that I promise won't happen again."

"Oh, shut up," I mumble without any anger or malice behind those words. I'm exhausted and I hurt - equates moody-Karie. I look towards Leliana when my last good thought resurfaces again. "Leliana, if the guards kept Jowan's things, where would they put 'em?"

She tucks a bit of ruddy hair behind her ear before she replies. "If they did not already dispose of them? A storage chest perhaps?" She nods to herself, "I will look, and I will also see if I can locate a health poultice for your use, Karie. You cannot continue in this state. I will not be long." She squeezes my shoulder briefly and companionably in reassurance before she dashes down one of the side halls, only after sending a scathing look of obvious warning Jowan's way. I sit heavily on a crate to ease my aching muscles, and I bring my non-injured hand to my side where my ribs are creaking beneath the weight of my armor. After I see Jowan pacing slightly out of the corner of my eye and I frown harshly at his clipped movements.

I look up at him and meet his eyes after a short moment and he just blurts, "Why are you doing this?"

I raise a brow in confusion and feel that frown deepen ever so slightly in response, "Doing what now?"

"Asking for my help, freeing me, letting yourself be used for a blood sacrifice?" With each thing he lists he takes a step in his pacing as if to enunciate each, "All sorts of mad things people who are right in their heads wouldn't do?" He's pacing two steps forward and two steps back now, and the repetitive motion is starting to irritate me a bit.

"Are you callin' me crazy?" My lips twist into an expression mirroring the irony of it all. "I probably am, but it's not your fault. And besides... I didn't think it was right to leave you for a snack for the skeletons and the spirit. I know how you ended up here, you know. I think I get it."

He leans back on his heels and crosses his arms across his bared, scared chest and says with suspicion lacing his voice, "And what do you expect of me in return for your kindness?"

"You to kill shit?" I feel my face crinkle at the implications of his question. This conversation is starting to worsen my aches and pains. "What else? I thought I already explained all that." He doesn't trust me, he doesn't know me, and he doesn't understand my motivations. I guess I haven't explained everything well enough then.

He's still pacing and the short, choppy steps combined with the hunch to his shoulders betray the thoughts that he's trying to keep silent on. I can only guess as to what's going on in his head. Probably nothing I'd actually like to hear. I'm kinda glad he's keeping quiet about whatever it is, but after a minute or so, he does reveal something of what he's thinking. "You set me free..." He trails off and takes a deep breath, "Can you guarantee my freedom?" He looks to me then, and instead of the fire that was blazing behind his gaze, there's a worry and doubt shadowing them in darkness.

"I think..." My gaze slides to the floor briefly in thought when I can't bare to look at that broken expression any longer. "I have a few ideas. I should be able to," I attempt to reassure him.

"Then I suppose we'll have to wait and see what comes of all this," he runs a hand through his unkempt hair in frustration and impatience. "I hate the unknown... the waiting. It's unbearable," he admits in a hushed tone.

"You'll be fine," I offer. "You'll just-"

"Wait." He interrupts me abruptly and takes several quick steps towards me with one hand outstretched and waving in an apparently universal hushing motion. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear wha-" I can't even finish a word this time before I break off mid-sentence because of something that hit the base of my neck. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel right. I look down at the afflicted area to see the hilt of a small knife embedded there. I stare at it in complete disbelief and bewilderment while I slowly wrap my leather-clad fingers around its hilt and pull it out of the flesh above my collarbone. My blood is coating my gloved fingers making them slick, and I look up with my mouth hanging open to see an obviously dead knight with a bow at his back standing at the end of the hall nearest to us. I can't hear with the blood rushing in my ears and my vision is starting to turn a little opaque at the sides now too. But I can't focus on anything other than the corpse making to grab his bow and the feeling of my own blood saturating my under tunic. I can't even feel the wound. Then the tendrils of blood magic embedded in my flesh start to tingle at the tips of my fingers before radiating outwards in a sensation that feels more like frostbite than heat. Is this what death feels like?

The lines in my skin alight in that moment with a burn that's more familiar than this consuming coldness. I feel a heat off to my side that's not from my blood magic lines, and then there's a bright flash of light and the anguished cries of the corpse. It's on fire. Jowan set it on fire. The corpse starts _running_ towards us then, and I step into its path. The burn of the blood magic is all consuming and compelling, more so than the flames that lick at my hand and arm when I grab for the skeleton's arm. Instantaneous feelings of pleasure, gratification, and revitalization vie for my complete focus while I drain the residual life from this recently deceased man. The bloody lines in my skin flicker with the energies that flow into them and subsequently filter into the rest of my body to restore it. By the end of it the corpse is little more than a charred husk on the floor, and I realize that damn, there must be a half-decent reaver somewhere in me. I just don't know what the fuck I'm doing until I'm in the middle of doing it.

The familiar sensations fade from my body along with the haze my injuries had originally saddled me with, and I turn to see if Jowan's still all whole. I see that Leliana has come up behind him with a hastily rolled bundle of fabric in her arms, and an ornate wooden and steel staff slung over her shoulder that looks more like a spear than anything else. Those must be Jowan's.

I look over towards him and he has this baffled look about him, but now I'm ready to go. And so is everyone else with Leliana back and well with the things we needed. We have to catch up to the others. Like right now. "Hey," I say in his direction and watch as he visibly straightens himself and clears his throat. "Do you know a shortcut to the front of the castle?"

Jowan clears his throat again, "There's old servant passages that lead from the kitchens to almost everywhere here."

"It seems we are all set then," Leliana adds and walks forward without batting an eye at the scene in front of her. "Lets be quick, shall we?"

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_A/N: So... I got about 3/4 of the way done with this chapter when FF decided it was a fine time to log me out before I could save what I was working on in the doc manager. XD Second time's the charm!  
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	18. Chapter 18

We entered the front chamber to a scene of utter chaos. The others had _definitely_ reached Connor before us. There's just too much going on for me to be able to focus on one thing for longer than a handful of horrifying moments though.

Near to the servant's door we had entered through there's two men... decapitated and gutted. Their lifeless faces are bathed in their own blood, and their innards are threatening to fall out of their splayed open cavities. Their eyes are open too, and the glassy wrongness of the orbs without the spark of life in them send a spike of dread straight through my core. One man's been completely cut through his mouth - severing his jaw and blowing through the back of his skull with ruddy brain matter and shockingly large shards of bone. I'd never seen anything half as disgusting, even the atrocities I've created first-hand, and it instantly awakens my baser instincts, both natural and unnatural. The blood magic pulses in my skin with the rush of fear-induced adrenaline, and I frantically look around for the cause of such a revolting thing. My sight lands on Sten swinging his ridiculously large sword straight through the sternum of another man. Scarlet blood arcs out through the man's back in wide, wet ribbons when the blade cuts through. I watch in horrified fascination as the blood arcs yet again when Sten pulls his blade from the dying man's cavity to splatter it all over the Qunari's sparse armor. Neither the sight of a dying man nor that man's blood phase the giant, and he goes right back to seeking out a new target with heavy, purposeful steps and a posture befitting a warrior his size. Sten exemplifies the aura of a predator. And he still scares the shit out of me.

My gaze swings 'round until I spy Sloane emerging from a dark shadow cast by heavy drapery off to the room's side to then sneak behind another armed and armored man silently. The elf has a steely look of malicious intent hardening his expression within the open face of his helm, and then he brings one of his delicately pointed daggers across the man's neck in a movement too precise and swift for me to follow. But I see the blood flowing freely from the fresh life-ending wound, and Sloane's victim stumbling to the stone of the floor with pained, gurgling gasps. The man futilely tries to stopper his blood with his hands clawing at his neck until he just can't any more. These are _men and women_. Alive and well people - not demon-fed corpses or mummified skeletons. What the fuck? Why are they _killing_ them? This whole thing is wrong. It all looks and feels wrong. The Veil is so thinned here it's almost chilling with its predominant undercurrent of power that feeds the sense of consuming _wrongness_ in this place.

"Somebody _do _something!" I say in a high-pitched panic-laced voice. I feel hot tears threatening to build behind my eyes at the madness of it all. "They're not supposed to kill them! They're not supposed to die!"

Only after I fear my pleading has fallen onto deaf ears, do I notice that I've latched onto Jowan's thick woolen robes with my hands swallowed up in the dark grey fabric. The man looks at me briefly with a guarded expression not betraying his emotions, before he moves his free hand to my own to effectively remove them from his forearm. Once his hands are free from me, he brings both his hands together, his wide sleeves falling down to his elbows with the movement, and the whole of his hands begin to glow in a faint olive green glowing manifestation of his supernatural powers. Then I notice when one of the stone benches next to the entryway quickly starts to crumble and dissolve into a dust that swirls and hovers above Jowan's hands heedless of gravity and physics. The dust solidifies into a small boulder held aloft by the green glowing magic after a short moment, then one of Jowan's hands snaps forward and so does the boulder through the air as if it was a small rocket, or rather a cannon ball. The mound of hard rock _slams _into the floor with a painful, sharp crack just slightly away from where Connor's standing with an ethereal red glow to his eyes and an unnatural bend to his neck. He's possessed, that what that looks like - the pale, glowing shadow of a boy with an unsettling expression of warring hate and joy stretching his face at odd angles. A sense of nausea fills the pit of my stomach at the realization. I'd never imagined to see such a thing in person - fictional movies, yes, but not here. Not for real. The instant the boulder collides with the stone floor the boy jolts and falls flat on his back. There's debris scattered over the boy from head-to-toe, and he's unmoving, but everything just... stops.

The men and women who were fighting my friends have stopped all voluntary action, and seemingly fainted with nothing more to their movements than shallow breaths. They fell with their weapons still tightly clutched in their hands. I look around and easily pick out Sloane, Sten, and Morrigan standing with varying degrees of confusion and stunned shock on their faces amongst the unconscious people in the large room who were just fighting them moments before. I hear nothing but Randall's soft whimper while he pads with claws clicking against the floor over towards Sloane in those eery moments. I look about again and I find Alistair off to the side holding a passed-out Teagan by the shoulders. Alistair's helmet is the most elaborate out of our lot, and it's obscuring my view of his expression. I can't discern his thoughts, but he's looking towards Connor even with the rest of his body supporting his uncle's weight.

I look up towards Jowan then and see him looking at me with an expression holding both confidence and pride, and not guarded wariness, which is apparent in the set of his chin and spark in his eyes. But... he didn't hurt Connor, did he?

"Dear Maker... Does the boy still yet live?" I hear Leliana whisper in a voice rough with emotion, and I look over to her with a fear and worry that reflects her own. I'd wanted it to all stop, didn't I? But at what cost?

There's been a chant of someone saying 'no, no, no' in the very background barely to be heard, but during these last few moments that chant has gotten loud enough to be heard clearly enough to be concerning. It's Isolde with her distinctive French-accent, but she sounds hoarse as if she were earlier screaming or crying. She's walking on visibly shaky legs over towards the prone form of her son now, and despite of who she is, I feel my heart aching in sympathy for her and her boy. She collapses beside him like a sack of potatoes, and cries out in a scream that further pulls at my heart. With tears streaming down her drawn face, Isolde cradles Connor's head in her lap with the utmost care and trembling hands. She's petting his hair and sobbing brokenly, like a woman who just can't deal with the pain she's experiencing. A similar pain I've felt before when waking in this place.

My eyes instantly snap towards Jowan again, but this time I know I hold a deeply felt suspicion in my dark gaze, "Did you kill him?" I hiss in hushed tones meant only for him to hear. He had stopped whatever madness was going on here, but he shouldn't have _killed _a possessed child over it. There's a fine line to cross here, and nothing is clear-cut. This whole place still feels as wrong as it looks. I can't tell what's going on with Connor, what state he's truly in, and especially not with a heart broken mother wailing so devastatingly with it echoing off of the vaulted ceiling.

"What?!" Jowan gasps and the confidence he'd radiated is rapidly replaced by a look of self-condemnation and shock. "No, no... I startled him. I wanted to deter his attention from his thralls-"

"_Ahhh!_" There's a feminine scream just in that moment that slices through the air as sharp as any knife, and I feel my heart lodge in my throat at the consuming fear in that very noise. Isolde's on her haunches backing away from Connor, and the boy he's... his whole body is glowing and his eyes are literally burning with a dark red energy. That feeling of coldness that's been licking at my blood magic lines vacuums towards the spot where Connor's standing with his feet levitating off the floor with the strength of the surge of dark power in his small frame. Desire's much, _much_ stronger than I had first thought.

An incredibly reckless idea strikes me in that moment, and before I can overthink it too much, I move my sword, adahl'mi, just far enough out of its scabbard to wrap my gloved hand along the sharpened edge and slice open my palm with a quick movement. My blood, both natural and not, burns and hurts enough to make me tremble, but I wrap that wound around the back of Jowan's nearest bared hand and feel the pain weigh down on me at the contact with someone imbued with blood magic. I grit my teeth through my body's reaction to this mage, and grunt out to him,

"Use my blood. Kill the spirit - _now!_" I hiss when Jowan looks unwilling.

He moves his other hand to hover over my own where I hold him, either to hold it or push it away, I don't know. He speaks with a seriousness and some other emotion I can't exactly place, "You'll die."

"I know." My vision is blurred by both pain and my own newly welling tears, but I don't see another way. This spirit has to die. I'm certain of it - I'm certain of my choice in this moment. I don't think I've been this certain of something since waking up here. In Thedas. I don't belong here, but I can make a difference in this. "_Just do it,_" I tell him and squeeze his larger hand just a bit more in encouragement.

He hesitates for the smallest, yet somehow the longest, of moments. There's something underlining to his expression, but he nods solemnly, once, and unbelievingly he does as I'd told him to with a blinding surge of red magic. I hear Connor scream with an unnaturally deep undercurrent to his voice just before I go deaf to the world. When everything turns to that voidless black that I associate with a blood mage's use of blood magic on me, on the tails of a suffocating sensation of sheer _burning _and _aching_, my last thoughts are of a wish that death would truly bring me back home.

* * *

_A/N: I've decided on a theme song for this story - Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons. Judge for yourselves if it fits well readers! - And a cliffhanger! :o Next chapter will be out this weekend!  
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	19. Chapter 19

"Fuck! She's wakin' up!"

"Shh! Be quiet!"

"Lemme see!"

"Would you _shut up_?"

My vision swims when I open my eyes and a foggy feeling of disorientation feels heavy on my mind. I blink rapidly to dispel the bright whiteness overwhelming me before my sight focuses on the familiar faces of my... immediate family. My dad's looking scared shitless with his soulful blue-grey eyes rimmed red. My mom's curly hair looks disheveled and her forehead is heavily creased with worry and the righteous stubbornness she always has about her when she's '_right_' about something. My youngest sister looks heartbreakingly upset with her arms wrapped around her chest and her lips between her teeth. But my middle sister and her brusque 'don't fuck with me you dumb piece of shit' demeanor being severely interrupted by a look of utter grief that's she's trying to smother by a stubborn set to her jaw garners my complete attention. Lah _never _cries unless something's terribly wrong. What is it? What's going on?

"I told you she's fine," my mother sighs. "Those doctors are idiots. There's no coma."

Coma - ? I look around and the shiny metallic and white-washed look of everything instantly strikes me as familiar. I'm in the hospital. But why? What happened?

"Wh-what?" I choke out on a too dry throat. It hurts to talk - it _burns_. My throat's never felt so raw.

"Don't talk," my dad hiccups sadly. "We don't know what's wrong with you."

"Y-you d-didn't go to work," Leigh blinks at me and releases her arms from around her chest. "You were still sleeping, but y-you wouldn't wake up."

"You've been out of it for three days," Lah interrupts her twin grumpily when Leigh looks on the verge of crying again.

Three days? But it feels longer than that. It feels... a hell of a lot longer than that. I remember... red hair framing a tanned face with a bare dimpled chin and playful hazel eyes. What's his name? I can't remember, but I know it - I do.

"Forget about him," my mom coos with her hand waving in my direction, but not touching. She's not the affectionate sort. "He's not important. We need to find out what happened to you." That's right, but... I didn't say all that aloud, did I?

"Wh-what?" I wheeze again, but this time to ask what I'd said.

"Maybe you have something wrong with your head," my mom tilts her own to emphasize her point. That sounds about right... maybe I do. Nothing is making much sense right now.

"Yeah," I agree breezily while I push myself further back into the stiff pillows on the hospital bed looking at my family. It seems so long since I've seen them. "Yeah."

"_Ar tu na'din_!" I hear someone rasp in a harsh voice suddenly, but I cannot see them. The voice... sounds familiar too. Who's is it? "Emma lethallan!" The words... I know them - 'my friend'? "This is setheneran lethallan! Do not fall for its tricks!"

"Aereweld?" I gasp at the shocking realization of just who's voice that is, and I look around frantically for her. I remember! Connor, Jowan, the blood sacrifice! I should be dead! What's happening? What is this?

"You're home Karie," my mom smiles widely. It looks... off though. This isn't right. It can't be.

"No," I whisper disbelievingly. I remember other things - I remember what happened to me... what those blood mages did.

"Halam sahlin!" The familiar accented voice of Aereweld shouts with a resounding _boom_... maybe magic, and the room starts to shatter and crumble. The very room breaks off into inexplicable shards of various sizes that float for a moment before dissolving into thin air. What the ever living _fuck_ is going on?

I watch then as Aereweld steps out of a swirling purple vortex amongst the room's shards with her black robes and dull green armor fluttering about her in a wind that can't be felt. Her diminutive face is pulled sharply in fierce anger and her hands are glittering with a light purple magic. "The spirits will not have you!"

"We already have her," my mother chuckles with an inhuman, dark undertone to her voice. "The blood mage delivered her to us. She is ours."

"Ma emma harel!" Aereweld growls while she brings her hands together before her and stretches them forwards, "Ar'din tu harel!" The light purple-colored magic pulses between her hands, and the room, or what's left of it, _shakes_. My mom, my dad, and my sisters shake with it and they each collapse one-by-one to... morph into sickening images of what they once were. I know what these monsters are. They're malicious spirits of fear and sloth. They're not my family at all. I've been tricked then. How could I have missed that with Aereweld's memories in my head?

Aereweld unsheathes her sword and tosses it to me and drags me from staring at what once was. I catch the curved blade with an ease that proves just how much I've been fooled. I could've never had done that before I'd met her. She then brings her staff to bare clutched between her un-gloved hands and looks at me directly while she orders in an eerily echoing shout, "Kill them lethallan! They must perish!"

"What's going on here?" I hear a differently accented voice ask from off to the side in that very moment, we all turn to look in the voices' direction, spirit and not, to see... Jowan looking bewildered at us all. Chaos... just plain madness happens then and everything's a blur of action. Instinct overwhelms all other thought when I'm faced with those creatures snarling and eager to hurt me. Soon enough I have the dark ichor of my family's doppelgangers coating my borrowed blade. I feel sick. Those disgusting creatures had me trapped. They could have killed me - used my life to fuel their own and I wouldn't ever have suspected it if not for Aereweld.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," Jowan pants with his hands braced against his sides while he attempts to catch his breath. He too had gotten caught up in the fight. "Granted, I'd never done such a spell before, but I was trying to send the other mage, that woman, into this plane of the Fade - not myself."

"Emma lethallan has a... strange bond with the dark magics," Aereweld offers by way of explanation with her brow furrowed. "I do not understand its complexities entirely myself. Perhaps that is why magic did not act as it should."

"And who the bloody Void are you? I've never seen you before," Jowan frowns at the smaller, yet more intimidating, elven woman who is still holding her staff defensively and standing protectively near me.

"Aereweld Ayuhni Ghilan'nainlen Dar'uthenera," she says proudly, but does not show any kindness towards Jowan. "Shemlen, we need to seek out the era'harel to end the ill spirit of Desire and free emma lethallan. She should not be in this place for long. It is not natural."

"Am I supposed to know what any of that means?" Jowan frowns.

"She means Connor. We find him, we find Desire, and then we can kill it." I shiver at the memory of what that demon had just done to me, or tried to do. "It _really _needs to die."

"And just how come you're not dead?" Jowan asks with a palpable suspicion. Good question, that.

"I protected her," Aereweld says with a visible straightening of her slim shoulders. "She does not deserve to die for her kindness. I am uthenera, and therefore I supplied your spell in her stead. I felt her essence dwindle within our bond, and I know her time has not yet come - I had to prevent it."

Jowan looks about ready to blurt another question, but I interrupt him, "I helped Aereweld pass on to the Beyond. She had lived an immortal's life and wanted to die. And... wait." I look over towards Aereweld with confusion marring my expression, "What are you doing here Aereweld? Didn't you pass on to the afterlife after I freed you?"

"I did, but I am dar'uthenera. You know I know how to transverse but a handful of planes in the Beyond without the aid of spirits _and_ without the restrictions of the blessed gem. That knowledge extends even in death." She explains patiently with a warmth in her violet gaze, "A part of me has been with you since I joined my consciousness with your own. I could feel when you were endangered in this place, and knew I had to act if only to further repay your for your deeds."

"I have more questions that I suspect will not be answered," Jowan drawls.

"Yes, shemlen," Aereweld sniffles. "Era'harel grows stronger the longer we hesitate."

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_A/N: I am a billion times sorry for making you all wait for this update! I would make this longer, but I can't consciously delay this update any longer. Transition chapter it is then! Now at least you all know Karie is not dead and has Aereweld to thank for her life - again. This story needed more Aereweld. :3 _

_Translations:_

___Ar tu na'din_: I will kill you.  


_Emma lethallan: My clansman._

_setheneran: land of waking dreams - a place where the Veil is thin.  
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_Halam sahlin: This ends now.  
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_Ma emma harel: You should fear me.  
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_Ar'din tu harel: I do not fear you.  
_

_Aereweld Ayuhni Ghilan'nainlen Dar'uthenera: Aereweld Ayuhni child of Ghilan'nain, the Halla-mother, and one of the immortals.  
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_Shemlen: quick-children - elvish word for humans.  
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_era'harel: in reference to Connor, a demon-mage. Someone like an arcane horror.  
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	20. Chapter 20

_"Era'harel grows stronger the longer we hesitate."_

* * *

"Milady elf," Jowan says questioningly when Aereweld seemingly fashions armor and a sword for me out of thin air with a wave of her purple glowing hands. It's weird. I didn't know she could do that, and I know her _very _well. "Are you... somniari?" I've heard that before... what's that from?

"Ah. The tongue of those hateful shemlen," she sniffles disdainfully up at the taller mage with a scowl seemingly a permanent fixture when she's looking at him. "No, shemlen. You should know I am uthenera... by unnatural means. Many in my guild was dreamer, but I was not born with such talents. My time within a vessel of the Beyond allowed me to explore such things without the restriction of a body and without the need of lyrium. I perfected that knowledge here, in death. I am somniari only without body and without prison, and consequentially I am uthenera without tethers to Thedas. It is... unusual. In my travels within the Beyond I have yet to meet another soul who shares such a... situation." She looks around briefly and beckons us forward, before she touches and manipulates the portal she had used to get here with her magic-infused hands. "It is difficult to explain. I am more alike to a spirit than not here. Even death isn't strong enough to seclude me to one plane of the Beyond. It seems that feat is only managed by a blessed gemstone. I'd needed emma lethallan to set me free. I was imprisoned for hundreds of years, shemlen. I know the Beyond better than most."

Jowan looks stupefied at her words. He's rooted to the spot while Aereweld manipulates her portal with her magic in her search for Connor. I look down then at the reinforced Dalish-looking leathers that have been put on me with Aereweld's magic, and a sudden thought occurs to me when I recognize the leaf-like engraving and the delicate metal-work. "Aereweld!" I look up at her in shock. "Why am I wearing Ambrosyia's leathers?" Ambrosyia is... was Aereweld's lover before she was locked in that gem. Aereweld believed her to be dead in the very battle that had resulted in the arcane warrior's own imprisonment.

The elven woman looks over her shoulder briefly at me with a carefully guarded expression, "I thought they would fit you well, emma lethallan." I feel my face scrunch in confusion just as Aereweld removes her hands from the purple, glowing face of the magic portal and continues with a short breath, "I have found era'harel. The spirit watches over him. We must be cautious."

I look at the purple glowing portal with some trepidation. I recognize them both from the game and from Aereweld's memories, but I don't dream in the Beyond, Fade, whatever. I'm not form Thedas, and so I don't have a connection with this place like the people from it do. Aereweld was right on the money when she said it wasn't natural for me to be here - there's an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and restlessness in me and in my blood magic lines that increases with every passing second. I feel Jowan shift from beside me and I look towards him then with what I'm sure is a fearful expression, before I take a calming breath and walk up towards Aereweld with more confidence than I feel. This is all surreal. I'd just put twisted images of my family to my sword, and now _this_. No. I... I was willing to die - I can do this.

"What do I do?" I ask Aereweld quietly.

The very corners of her mouth lift for a moment. "Take my hand, lethallan, and allow me to guide you. I will not allow you to be lost within the Beyond's fabric. Your experiences here should be no worse than that when you were transversing planes of existence." I can't help but to believe her.

There's a blinding, suffocating flash of purple light when Aereweld raises her hand and touches the portal delicately with her fingers spread wide. It feels like I'm being pulled in all directions and my heart's lodged in my throat, but I can also feel Aereweld's hand wrapped around my own even when I'm too dizzy to tell up from down. It's grounding, and I'm thankful for it. When I _finally _find solid ground beneath my feet I stumble and collapse on my hands and knees with heaving breaths. I feel nauseous and my head's spinning. That was... intense. That's the best word I can think to describe that _little_ experience right there.

"I'd never seen someone have such an adverse reaction to inter-Fade-traveling before," I hear Jowan remark from somewhere off behind me.

"Emma lethallan is not mage-blooded, shemlen. She is even severed from the Beyond in sleep," I then hear Aereweld sneer.

"Like a dwarf?" Jowan says curiously.

"Shh, you two," I groan. "Goddamn," I gasp when the spinning in my head coalesces into a sharp pain that spears right through me and through my markings as quick as a whip. I can_ feel_ and _see_ them pulsing in my skin with an eery glow and burning, stabbing sensation. It wracks my body, and I can feel the sensation building until the tension snaps causing me to loose an involuntary aura of pain with frazzling nerves. I faintly hear Jowan curse the Maker beneath the pounding in my head, and then there's a sucking, draining feeling licking at my skin that leaves me feeling weak and bereft after a handful of heartbeats. The frazzling of the aura of pain stops, and so does all other sensation. I apparently don't have a good handle on this reaver shit still.

"Do that again shemlen, and I'll ensure that you'll never feel the powers of the Beyond again," I hear Aereweld growl and it's enough to snap me out of my momentary stupor. I sit up on my knees, and turn to see Aereweld with her sword drawn and pointing in Jowan's direction. What the fuck?

"I had to drain her!" Jowan pleads with his hands raised. "I felt a shift! She was drawing demons towards us, _and_ that bloody well hurt!"

"Aereweld," I croak, "I'm - I'm okay. I-I couldn't stop it."

"Lethallan," Aereweld says and briefly looks me over with concern briefly flashing through her eyes. She then lowers her sword, but doesn't sheathe it. "Good," she takes a deep breath. "The shemlen was correct - you did draw spirits towards us. They are coming."

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_A/N: Short chapter, I know. And I'm _still _behind a chapter on updating. :/ To make up for it though - I've painted a quick portrait of Sloane! There's a link on my profile if you're interested. And! - I'll give you a little bonus - t__hese are my notes on Aereweld: Aereweld wasn't born a somniari like Feynriel, but learned how to do somniari-like things within her guild when she was alive, and when she was in her gem. When she was in the gem and her body was no longer alive, she became immortal (uthenera) until she was set free. In my head-canon arcane warriors share roots with somniari.  
And I'm going to -try- and update another chapter today/tonight readers! :)_


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